"Sorry" isn't good enough, Bishop Lahey

[grammafreddy]

Disgraced bishop 'truly sorry'
by The Canadian Press - Story: 68775
Dec 20, 2011 / 2:32 pm


Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Bishop Raymond Lahey, right, arrives at the Ottawa Court House in Ottawa on Wednesday, May 4, 2011. The disgraced Roman Catholic bishop will be sentenced Jan. 4 on one count of importing child pornography. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

A disgraced Roman Catholic bishop who got busted with hundreds of pornographic photos of young boys says he's sorry.

Speaking in public for the first time since he got caught at the Ottawa airport, Raymond Lahey offered an apology to the church and to victims of child pornography.

"I am truly sorry for what I have done," Lahey told the court on Tuesday, the second day of his sentencing hearing.

The 71-year-old cleric, looking gaunt and frail, said his addiction to Internet porn went against his moral principles.

"I know that I've done wrong."

The court heard Lahey's collection included pornographic photos featuring Catholic imagery, including young boys wearing crucifixes and rosary beads engaged in sex acts, and a man dressed as a monk hitting a young boy's bare buttocks with a paddle.

There were also graphic images of bondage and torture.

"They are graphic in the extreme," Crown attorney David Elhadad said of Lahey's collection of child porn.

Lahey sat with his arms crossed as the judge and the lawyers looked at photos from his collection.

Later, he offered some insight into his actions.

"Deep down, I desired to be found out," Lahey told the court.

"Being discovered coming through customs was a blessing in disguise."

He will be sentenced Jan. 4 on one count of importing child pornography.

He voluntarily went to jail last spring to begin serving time even before his formal sentencing.

A second charge of simple possession remains against Lahey, but it is expected to be withdrawn as part of the plea deal when he is formally sentenced.

Lahey was arrested at the Ottawa airport in September 2009 after customs authorities found hundreds of pornographic photos of young boys on his laptop and a handheld device.

A psychiatrist has told the court that testing suggests the bishop is not a pedophile.

What a POS. I detest these kinds of people who wrap themselves in a cloak of piousness, preach about their god and then behind the scenes rape and abuse the children in their care. He's not charged with sexual abuse against kids, but as far as I am concerned, what he's done is the next worst kind of thing. The kids in the pornographic pictures may have been victims of other priests in other jurisdictions. And perhaps his victims have yet to speak up about any abuses he perpetrated against them. Time will tell on that one.

And this is how the Catholic Church in BC responds ...

http://bcc.rcav.org/canadian/656-deborah-gyapong

[Nom_de_Plume]

A psychiatrist has told the court that testing suggests the bishop is not a pedophile.

What a POS. I detest these kinds of people who wrap themselves in a cloak of piousness, preach about their god and then behind the scenes rape and abuse the children in their care. He's not charged with sexual abuse against kids, but as far as I am concerned, what he's done is the next worst kind of thing. The kids in the pornographic pictures may have been victims of other priests in other jurisdictions. And perhaps his victims have yet to speak up about any abuses he perpetrated against them. Time will tell on that one.

And this is how the Catholic Church in BC responds ...

http://bcc.rcav.org/canadian/656-deborah-gyapong

The psychiatrist forgot a word at the end of that sentence - YET
that's an awful lot of kiddie porn for someone who supposedly isn't a pedophile, and on both his laptop and handheld?
how long does it take to go from fantasizing about it to doing it?
Ya he's sorry, sorry he got caught.

[Queen K]

You got that right.

Everytime we read about an attempted kidnapping of young people anywhere, not just in the Okanagan Valley, I"m thinking that someone wants to go from fantasy to acting out, just like they've seen a hundred or more times on the internet.

That guy is a pedophile.
He didn't want to get caught.
The only remorse he has is that he got caught.
He needs to be "ex-communicated" by the Church.
Jailed by the secular society.

[grammafreddy]

What always fries my *bleep* is that the Catholic population never says "boo" about any of this. It's like they just sweep it under their collective rugs and duck and run for cover. If he wasn't a Catholic priest, they'd be standing up and yelling just like the rest of us.

And, because they do that, their church is allowed to keep on moving these child abusers from community to community - raping and abusing innocent kids in every place they go, then moving on to the next. If they'd just start yelling publicly about it and letting their church leaders know it will no longer be tolerated, threaten to leave this corrupt institution and demand jail terms for these perpetrators, then maybe something would get done internally about it. But they don't - and they put every Catholic child right into the hands of these pedophiles - including their own.

Just the fact that a lot of the pictures this man possessed had Catholic symbols in them with the abused kids tells me there's a whole ring of Catholic child sexual abusers and these kinds of pictures circulate inside their ranks at the upper levels of authority. How can any adult sanction that? Maybe their own kids are the ones in those pictures? Would they care? I highly doubt it. That's just sick.

[5VP]

What always fries my *bleep* is that the Catholic population never says "boo" about any of this. It's like they just sweep it under their collective rugs and duck and run for cover. If he wasn't a Catholic priest, they'd be standing up and yelling just like the rest of us.

A lady friend of mine is in an abusive relationship here in town.

Her ex husband was also abusive. All catholic.

When I asked if she'd been seeking help she told me that she'd been seeing a "counselor".

Turns out this "counselor" was the abusers brother and a lay person in the Rutland catholic church...

[grammafreddy]

What always fries my *bleep* is that the Catholic population never says "boo" about any of this. It's like they just sweep it under their collective rugs and duck and run for cover. If he wasn't a Catholic priest, they'd be standing up and yelling just like the rest of us.

A lady friend of mine is in an abusive relationship here in town.

Her ex husband was also abusive. All catholic.

When I asked if she'd been seeking help she told me that she'd been seeing a "counselor".

Turns out this "counselor" was the abusers brother and a lay person in the Rutland catholic church...

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest. It's how the church manages to keep it covered up and how they continue to brainwash their masses into not going public.

[zzontar]

GF, there are lots of pedophiles out there, you're mad because of people that don't speak up because it involves religion, yet you usually seem to speak up about it only when it does involve religion. Shouldn't every offense be equally bad no matter who commits it for both you and the Catholics?

[rutland1]

Its not just the church doing the brainwashing,our media does the same tactics every day.

[grammafreddy]

GF, there are lots of pedophiles out there, you're mad because of people that don't speak up because it involves religion, yet you usually seem to speak up about it only when it does involve religion. Shouldn't every offense be equally bad no matter who commits it for both you and the Catholics?

I speak up about all of them. But the religious ones pee me off more than the others because these are people in positions of trust and power over their people. They are supposed to protect those kids - not "play" with them for their own sick fantasies.

[zzontar]

GF, there are lots of pedophiles out there, you're mad because of people that don't speak up because it involves religion, yet you usually seem to speak up about it only when it does involve religion. Shouldn't every offense be equally bad no matter who commits it for both you and the Catholics?

I speak up about all of them. But the religious ones pee me off more than the others because these are people in positions of trust and power over their people. They are supposed to protect those kids - not "play" with them for their own sick fantasies.

Religion to you is like the cops to grumpydigger. You mentioned once how it was sad he had that attitude, I guess it goes both ways.

[grammafreddy]

GF, there are lots of pedophiles out there, you're mad because of people that don't speak up because it involves religion, yet you usually seem to speak up about it only when it does involve religion. Shouldn't every offense be equally bad no matter who commits it for both you and the Catholics?

I speak up about all of them. But the religious ones pee me off more than the others because these are people in positions of trust and power over their people. They are supposed to protect those kids - not "play" with them for their own sick fantasies.

Religion to you is like the cops to grumpydigger. You mentioned once how it was sad he had that attitude, I guess it goes both ways.

Deal with it, I guess. I'm not about to stop exposing these pieces of human trash. If people are that brainwashed that they will allow kids to be sexually and mentally abused, they need to do some soul searching about what their churches are doing under their pious cloaks.

[zzontar]

I see your point completely GF, I'm just hoping you saw mine.

[cliffy1]

I was brought up in the church and I know that if I had been abused and told my father about it, I would have been beaten within an inch of my life. That was in the fifties. Today, there is no excuse for this nonsense. But I know a few Catholics who would do the same today. There is nothing so blind as blind faith.

[cutter7]

I was brought up in the church and I know that if I had been abused and told my father about it, I would have been beaten within an inch of my life. That was in the fifties. Today, there is no excuse for this nonsense. But I know a few Catholics who would do the same today. There is nothing so blind as blind faith.

I know more than a few catholics who would forget what the bible teaches if someone touched their kid.

Nobody likes a skin hound. sick buggers.

[cliffy1]

I was brought up in the church and I know that if I had been abused and told my father about it, I would have been beaten within an inch of my life. That was in the fifties. Today, there is no excuse for this nonsense. But I know a few Catholics who would do the same today. There is nothing so blind as blind faith.

I know more than a few catholics who would forget what the bible teaches if someone touched their kid.

Nobody likes a skin hound. sick buggers.

Hell. I know a few people, believers and nonbelievers, who would forget about the law. I know if I walked into that kind of situation, I would not be responsible for what happened next, no matter whose kid it was.