That 70s Show actor Danny Masterson, was recently sentenced to 30 years in prison for the rape of two women, including his ex-girlfriend. Still, many people are focusing on the absolutely ridiculously contrived apology video that his friends from the show, married couple Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis filmed after it was discovered that they wrote letters in support of his friends.
While most of the focus was on this video, one of the elements of the story that was not as widely known was that the Church of Scientology covered up his crimes, and of course, Leah Remini was right there with the tea.
The Church of Scientology absolutely is wrong for covering up the sexual abuse, but really, as much as they claim to be so different, isn’t covering up sexual abuse par for the course for many religions?
This morning, I read an excerpt from Jill Duggar-Dillard’s book where she accuses her father of treating her worse than her pedophilic brother, Joshua Duggar, who is the eldest of his parents’ nineteen children. Josh abused his sisters and after his family consulted with church leaders, Josh was subsequently sent to a counseling program that included physical labor before being allowed back home, in July of 2003. In 2019 the U.S. Department of Justice raided his used car lot and subsequently arrested him for receiving and possessing child pornography in 2021. The Duggar family famously does not believe in birth control, they believe that women are subservient to men and that a woman’s body is for bearing children, and I guess a sister’s body is for bearing her brother.
The Duggars are devout independent Baptists. However, the practice of keeping child sex abuse on the hush is not exclusive to weird protestants, because the Catholics have unfortunately entered the chat. The Catholic Church has a long-standing history of covering up the sexual abuse of minors, and instead of relieving sexually repressed priests of their duties (because he may be a child molester, but he is still ordained by God), they would move the priest to a different location so that he could spread his crimes and the word of God. Instead of halting the destruction of sexual abuse, the Catholic Church let it increase.
Organized religions all over the world seem to center themselves on the purity and chastity of women and young girls, while ignoring the evils perpetrated by the men in their organizations, who do irrevocable harm and Christianity is not alone.
A quick Google search of ‘religious leader covered up rape,’ garners an inventory of stories of sexual abuse covered up or perpetrated by various religious leaders. The vast majority of the victims are women and children. When the media reports on cults, there are often stories of child brides in the details.
How many times has a man run off to Utah with a bible and small children?
While Jehovah’s Witnesses famously reject the blood of others, a child’s tears are good enough to sacrifice, as that organization has also come under fire and been sued multiple times for covering up sex crimes against children. Even though Protestants and Catholics have been in disagreement since Henry VIII wanted to marry different women, the one thing they conveniently have in common is that their religions are based on the same principle of getting a virginal teenager pregnant without her consent.
Various religions may have nothing in common but the majority of them seem to agree that violating the same purity that is professed as the standard of perfection is not nearly as serious of a crime as the act of losing it.
