By Seamus McGraw
(Conitnued)
In fact, he says, it is only a small step from the well documented cases of pedophilia involving priests to the allegations that surround the Toledo case. "I'm working with a victim right now," said Hoatson, who has emerged as a kind of father confessor to a broad group of abuse victims, "and in that case, it looks like your garden variety sexual abuse. But the priest took him down from Rhode Island to Massachusetts to get him a tattoo.... of the devil with the horns that are used in Satanic ritual."
To Hoatson, sexual abuse of children is an exercise in power and manipulation, and it would only be expected, he said, that priests, if they engaged in it, would be drawn to ritual.
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| Father Robert Hoatson |
"It's a natural thing for priests to engage in that kind of abuse because they have been so stepped in ritual, incense, candles, and fire and water and altar cloths," he says. "It's all power.... I think the priest ends up using the tools of his trade — the ritual — in order to intimidate the child. It puts greater fear in them."
So far, he admits, the evidence to support the claims of ritualized abuse is scant, most of it coming from the compelling and often, he says, credible testimony of alleged victims.
But that was also the case when word of the priest pedophile scandal first emerged, he said. There was reluctance on the part of everyone, authorities, the church, even the families of the victims themselves, to believe that such things were occurring. It took time, he said, until the allegations reached critical mass and only then did the church and the authorities mount a campaign to root it out.
The same may be true of the allegations of ritual sexual abuse, he said, and it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the case in Toledo may turn out to be the first round fired in that new battle.
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