“A senior Catholic priest who forcibly kissed and groped a grieving male parishioner was today sentenced to a three-month suspended jail term… The monsignor was aged 43 when he went to the victim’s home after identifying the body of the young man’s sister, who had been killed in a road crash, Crown prosecutor Daryl Coates told the court. The victim was sitting in a car when Green sat down beside him, grabbed his groin and forcibly tongue kissed him, Mr Coates said. He broke from the priest’s embrace and fled the car and later saw Green talking with his family ‘as though nothing had happened’, the court was told… Green maintained he did not remember the incident, but accepted the victim’s account of events, he said… [The defense said:] ‘The kiss, while forceful and prolonged, was a solitary kiss and discreet. The accused is a tactile person, it has always been part of his nature to offer much warmth and comfort by way of hugs and cuddles.’” —Herald Sun (Australia)

(Thanks to alanr for the link.)

“Your sister’s dead. Let’s fuck.” Something tantamount to this must have been running through the monsignor’s mind when making his moves on the grieving young victim, and it goes without saying that the circumstances make the offense rather more grotesque than is normally the case when clergy grope their congregants. Then again, you can kind of see where he was coming from. Sadness can make people very attractive, and a crying person makes you want to console him somehow, reassure him, give him a hug. You can see how the urge to console might get mixed up with the urge to plow your tongue down somebody’s throat. But of course that’s no excuse for actually doing it.

All that being said, did you notice the line of defense in the story? The priest claimed not to remember the specific event and yet he “accepted the victim’s account of events.” Think about that for a minute. Doesn’t it imply that this was typical behavior for the priest? Something so common that he wouldn’t remember it and yet something so normal that he wouldn’t deny that it really took place? Probably he was lying — probably he did remember it — and he was claiming not to remember it as a sort of defense mechanism, meaning something that simultaneously made him less accountable (”No big deal, I don’t even remember it”) and yet allowed him to own up to his deeds (”If you say it happened, you must be right”). It’s never a surprise when criminals lie in court. But at the same time, this strange combination of deceit and admission would seem to put the perp in an even guiltier position. It makes it look as though this was not a single transgression but rather a habitual behavior, as though he went around funerals tongue-kissing the mourners.

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