I know that it's silly to get irritated by the misleading nature of newspaper headlines, but given that they are usually misleading in an inflammatory sense, I am surprised by the euphemistic tone of the headline and the opening sentence of the story below.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101900533.html
Quote:
A Florida newspaper has interviewed a Catholic priest who acknowledged having an intimate, two-year relationship 40 years ago with a youthful Mark Foley, the former U.S. Congressman who resigned last month after being accused of inappropriate sexual conduct with Congressional pages.
Rev. Anthony Mercieca told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that he befriended Foley when he was assigned to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth, Fla. Foley was an altar boy in the parish.
Mercieca told the newspaper that he took overnight trips with Foley, skinny-dipped and sat naked in a sauna with him and massaged Foley while the youth was undressed, the article says. Foley was 12 or 13 at the time.
The priest told the newspaper that he believed there was one explicitly sexual encounter with Foley, during an overnight trip when Mercieca was in what he described as a drug-induced stupor.
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The priest admits having an "intimate relationship" with a "youthful Mark Foley." Mark Foley was TWELVE. Eighteen is "youthful." Twelve is a child. The priest admits to skinny dipping, taking naked saunas, and massaging a 12-year-old. That is not "intimate," that is sexual contact. An intimate relationship is something to which an adult consents. Since it couldn't have been consensual, it wasn't a relationship, therefore, it could only have been abuse.
Again, I am talking about the press, so it's pointless even to say this, but this headline and the tone of the story are ridiculous and appalling. What this priest has admitted to could be described with a string of harsh, judgmental adjectives that I hesitate to use because they are usually in the arsenal of the most righteosly hypocritical people in this country ... but it's clearly immoral, indecent, illegal, disgusting, and abusive. Yet he seems to be getting gentler treatment from these reporters and/or their editors than Foley himself, or even Dennis Hastert, are getting in connection with the page scandal.
And what do they mean by "explicit sexual encounter"? Were all the other naked encounters only implicitly sexual? Is the difference, either in the priest's mind, or the reporters' minds, that somebody's private parts got touched that time?
I don't expect the article to display obvious disgust, but the way this article describes what happened, you'd think the priest was just some old guy reminiscing about a ski trip with his college girlfriend.
