TV Torture Show repeats Milgram, clergy abuse worldwide, boy scouts

Fake TV Torture Show Prepares to Shock France - Theunis Bates 3/18/10
LONDON (March 17) - Would you torture a fellow TV game show contestant just to please the audience? A stunning documentary suggests that most people are willing to inflict extreme pain on an innocent person if it keeps a baying crowd happy.

The makers of the French documentary "The Game of Death" -- to be aired in France tonight -- set up a fake game show called "The Xtreme Zone," complete with a beautiful hostess, a rowdy audience and a flashy set. Some 80 potential contestants were asked to put general-knowledge questions to another participant named Jean-Paul, who was played by an actor. If the actor got the answers wrong, the questioner could pull a lever and punish him with electric shocks.

Although the participants didn't know the contestant was a plant, most were willing to give in to the presenter's and audience's loud demands for "punishment!" whenever an incorrect answer was given. According to director Christophe Nick, 64 of the 80 players zapped the actor with what they were told was the maximum 460 volts, even though no cash prize was offered. Sixteen people quit the quiz in disgust....

Program maker Nick said his crew was "amazed" that so many players were willing to go along with the sadistic whims of the host and crowd, albeit often reluctantly. "They are not equipped to disobey," he told Agence France-Presse. "They don't want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don't manage to."....

Other tests have also shown the ease with which people can be persuaded to do terrible deeds. Almost 50 years ago, Stanley Milgram -- a social psychologist at Yale University -- examined whether ordinary citizens could be persuaded to electrically shock an unseen individual. The experiment sought to understand how accomplices in the Holocaust could have submitted to Nazi orders. Milgram discovered that most of the participants were willing to administer near-fatal zaps.

Nick notes that in the wrong hands, television can be just as dangerous as a persuasive dictator. "When it decides to abuse its power, television can do anything to anybody," he said. "It has an absolutely terrifying power."
http://www.aolnews.com/entertainment/article/fake-tv-torture-show-prepares-to-shock-france/19403229

French TV contestants made to inflict 'torture' 3/18/10 A French TV documentary features people in a spoof game show administering what they are told are near lethal electric shocks to rival contestants. Those taking part are told to pull levers to inflict shocks - increasing in voltage - upon their opponents. Although unaware that the contestants were actors and there was no electrical current, 82% of participants in the Game of Death agreed to pull the lever.

Programme makers say they wanted to expose the dangers of reality TV shows. They say the documentary shows how many participants in the setting of a TV show will agree to act against their own principles or moral codes when ordered to do something extreme....

Christophe Nick, the maker of the documentary, said they were "amazed" that so many participants obeyed the sadistic orders of the game show presenter. "They are not equipped to disobey," he told AFP.
"They don't want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don't manage to."

Yale experiment
The results reflect those of a similar experiment carried out almost 50 years ago at Yale University by social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Participants took the role of a teacher, delivering what they believed were shocks to an actor every time they answered a question incorrectly. Mr Nick says that his experiment shows that the TV element further increases people's willingness to obey. "With Milgram, 62% of people obeyed an abject authority. In the setting of television, it's 80%," he told Reuters. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8571929.stm



Catholic church sex scandals rock Brazil 3/18/10 RIO DE JANEIRO - The Brazilian authorities are investigating three priests accused of sexually abusing altar boys after a video allegedly showing one case of abuse was broadcast on television, police said on Tuesday.

The case came to light after a network aired a video purportedly showing an 82-year-old priest having sex with a 19-year-old altar boy who worked for him for four years.
Other young men appeared on the report saying that they, too, had been abused. The Vatican confirmed that three Brazilian clergymen had been removed in the paedophilia scandal....

The Vatican has also ended a probe into the Legionaries of Christ after revelations that its late founder molested seminarians and fathered children, the ultra-conservative order said on Tuesday. The outcome would be "communicated in the coming months".
Vatican watcher Sandro Magister said the pope, who in 2006 ordered Legionaries of Christ founder Marcial Maciel to renounce all duties and lead a "quiet life of prayer and penitence," should name a commissioner "with full powers" to overhaul the order.
Before Maciel's fall from grace, he and the order were championed by the pope's predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Earlier this month in Mexico, the order asked for forgiveness after two brothers claiming to be Maciel's sons said he had abused them. Maciel, who died aged 87 in January 2008, led the order he founded in Mexico in 1941 with an iron fist.
Last year, the order confirmed that Maciel had secretly fathered a daughter. Maciel was also accused of sexually abusing seminarians, prompting the pope's denunciation.
The order is present in 22 countries, notably Mexico and Spain, and runs 12 universities. It counts 800 priests, 2,500 seminarians and 70,000 lay members.
http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC100318-0000087/Catholic-church-sex-scandals-rock-Brazil


Irish Catholic church in new child sex abuse allegations - Reports of settlement overseen by bishop of Derry adds to abuse scandals surrounding Catholic churches in Europe Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent 18 March 2010

The Catholic church in Ireland was today embroiled in another child abuse scandal after allegations that a victim was paid to keep quiet in a deal overseen by the bishop of Derry. Bishop Seamus Hegarty was named as a party in a confidential civil settlement after a woman claimed she was abused by a priest for more than a decade, according to a report in today's Belfast Telegraph. According to the newspaper, the claim was settled without admission of liability but with a payment of £12,000 to the alleged victim. The settlement between the archdiocese of Derry and the woman, who was eight when the abuse began, reportedly contained a confidentiality clause preventing her from discussing the case.

Her ordeal allegedly began in 1979 and lasted for a decade before she revealed at her 18th birthday party that she had been repeatedly abused by the priest....
The Derry abuse case allegedly began after the priest was invited into the family home by the alleged victim's parents, who had no idea he was a child abuser. She claims he told the girl that God would punish her if she spoke out about her ordeal. After she did speak out, her family approached the diocese in Derry, and the victim claims the cleric was moved to another parish despite meetings with Hegarty in 1994 during which he told her family he would deal with the problem. In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph today, her family described Hegarty as being "totally unsympathetic" during their initial meetings. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/18/irish-catholic-church-child-abuse


Germany and Ireland call on Catholic church to hold child sex abuse inquiries Angela Merkel becomes most senior politician to speak out over abuse by priests as pope to release pastoral letter on subject 17 March 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/17/catholic-church-abuse-germany-ireland


The List: The Catholic Church's Latest Abuse Scandals - FP's guide to the Vatican's spiraling crisis. BY KAYVAN FARZANEH MARCH 16, 2010 The report alleged 2,000 cases of abuse over a 60-year period. A second government investigation, released by the Irish government in November 2009, fanned the flames by revealing the collusion of Irish police in systematically covering up cases of child abuse by Dublin clergymen. For Ireland, this is only the latest part of the clergy abuse saga -- the Associated Press reports that since the mid-1990s there have been nearly 15,000 complaints leveled against the church -- with legal claims topping $1.5 billion....In September 2009, a Vatican official responded to growing criticism by defending the clergy's action, citing statistics that showed only 1.5 to 5 percent of clergy have been involved in cases of child sex abuse -- a leaky argument that acknowledges sexual abuse by up to 20,000 priests worldwide....

In late February, a Dutch radio station and newspaper broke the story of alleged abuse in Dutch Catholic boarding schools in the 1960s and 70s. The last Catholic boarding school may have closed in 1981, but victims have not forgotten their traumatic experiences. Once again, the trickle of a few lone voices surged into a torrent -- nearly 200 allegations surfaced in the weeks following the radio program. Victims told stories of priests who shamed them into thinking they had done something wrong, which accounted for their silence. Even when accusations were leveled, priests tended to brush off evidence....

The latest and most salient crisis is now taking place in Germany, where allegations of abuse have surfaced this year for the first time. At least 300 cases of abuse have emerged, and elite Jesuit boarding schools across the country have been accused of mistreating pupils. Eighteen of the 27 German archdioceses are now being investigated for child abuse while the German Justice Ministry says that Vatican secrecy has hampered investigations for the past decade.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/16/the_list_the_catholic_church_s_latest_abuse_scandals


Trial opens in Portland, with Boy Scouts accused of hiding pedophiles By Aimee Green, The Oregonian March 17, 2010, Attorney Kelly Clark, who represents a 37-year-old man who as a boy was sexually abused by an assistant Scoutmaster, told Multnomah County jurors Wednesday: "You will see a different face of the Boy Scouts of America" in coming weeks. A civil trial that opened Wednesday in Portland will show that the Boy Scouts of America knew it had child molesters in its leadership for decades but kept the problem quiet, according to an attorney for one of the victims. The case, expected to attract national attention, centers on a Portland man who confessed to Scout leaders that he had molested 17 Scouts but was allowed to continue joining boys in Scouting activities.

On a broader scale, the case is one of the first to bring into open court hundreds of confidential files that the 100-year-old organization kept on Scout leaders and others suspected of sexually abusing boys. Though the Scouts, based in Texas, have been sued dozens of times over allegations of sexual abuse, most cases have been settled out of court, keeping files from becoming public. Patrick Boyle, the Washington, D.C.-based author of "Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution," said Wednesday that this case may be only the second time such files have been used in a trial....
Timur Dykes, 53...Confessed to or was convicted of molesting more than 20 boys, most of them Boy Scouts. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/trial_opens_in_portland_with_b.html