Dorothy Rabinowitz exposed the hysteria behind the child abuse stories of the 1980s and 1990s as a modern day witch hunt. Now she's looking into the priest pedophilia stories of recent years in which the Catholic Church has shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to accusers.
That the scandals that began reaching flood tide in the late '90s had to do with charges all too amply documented, and that involved true predators, no one would dispute. Nor can there be much doubt that those scandals, their nonstop press coverage, and the irresistible pressure on the church to show proof of cleansing resulted in a system that rewarded false claims along with the true. An expensive arrangement, that--in more ways than one.
The story of Father Gordon MacRae calls to mind the current case against Michael Jackson. Forget Jackson's guilt for a moment (which seems highly plausible to me) and focus on the parents who allowed their children to hang out with a grown man and sleep in his bed and how they profited from that association.
Con artists are pretty good students of human nature. And these days accustations of child abuse, despite Rabinowitz's stellar earlier work on the subject, strike a chord in the common psyche that's ripe for exploitation. Unsurprising then that many see an opportunity for easy cash.
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