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Originally posted by FMFFrom what we know about "the authorities," what do you think they would have done about it if they had received reports? I do not think that child abuse has been a secret at any time in the past century or even beyond that. For example, James Joyce had trouble publishing his collection of short stories called Dubliners partly because it described exactly that problem and it was considered shameful to put it in a book. Between 1905, when Joyce first sent a manuscript to a publisher, and 1914, when the book was finally published, Joyce submitted the book 18 times to a total of 15 publishers. The book's publishing history is a harrowing tale of persistence in the face of frustration.
How can anyone here know how much information was withheld from the Royal Commission? And anyway it's beside the point. The point here is how much information was withheld from the authorities during the 60 years leading up to the Royal Commission being set up in order to investigate the scandal.
The authorities prior to recent decades were complicit in abuse, not protective of children but of adults.
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Originally posted by finneganBe that as it may, but I doubt that this was the corporate reason for the cover up and for the intimidation of victims. If it was the real reason then perhaps institutions like the JWs and Catholic Church could now use it in their defence, although it would surely be increasingly weak as a defence for any institutional or systematic cover up of abuse as we moved through the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s..
The authorities prior to recent decades were complicit in abuse, not protective of children but of adults.
