Child abuse victims deserve batter than a hashtag on Twitter

#scraptheangelus.

What’s that all about? It’s called a hash tag and is used on Twitter to identify a tweet as being about a particular topic/event or cause.

In this case, the hashtag is yet another in a long line of internet responses to child rape, abuse and torture covered up by church authorities. Crimes so sickening that they don’t even bear thinking about.

The sad thing about these responses is they are all about the church and not the victim. You only have to look on Facebook as a guide. Expel the Papal Nuncio from Ireland has over 5,150 fans. Supporters of the ISPCC ? 375.

I blogged some time ago about what stirs Irish passions on Facebook and you can see the graphic there which illustrates the same point.

My view is that if you’re going to get exercised about a cause, do something to help those who need it rather than make it all about your own belief or non-belief system. The most vocal voices on the Irish blog and Twittersphere about this issue are intolerant of anyone with a belief system and believe themselves to be of higher intelligence. Take yesterday’s Sunday Independent as an example of the sneering attitude I’m talking about.

Emer O’Kelly, writing about the issue of Good Friday drinking says :

“Take 100 people; offer each of them a ticket for a rugby match between Leinster and Munster on Good Friday. How many of them would prefer to take up the offer rather than go to church that afternoon for Good Friday services, in commemoration of the hour when tradition holds that Christ died on the cross? Probably 99.

The one who would genuinely prefer to go to church is possibly suffering from a slightly unhealthy religious mania.”

An “unhealthy religious mania” to make a free choice in a democratic society to attend a religious service or not.

She makes valid points in the article too, but it’s tainted by her opening comments. They demonstrate an utter disdain for fellow country men and women (of which there are more than she or the media would have us believe) that choose to go to church on Good Friday. Men and women that recognise the wrongs in the church but also believe the church is more than the bishops and priests who run it.

Hashtags on twitter and facebook groups that focus on the perpetrators of a crime rather than the victim are plain wrong. Using child abuse as a way to seek the removal of the catholic church in Ireland is a supreme act of selfishness with and deserves no support.

Support the ISPCC, One in Four or the Alliance Support Group in a practical way. Get angry about children at risk TODAY.

The removal of one minute of a bell ringing on RTE isn’t going to take away the pain of a child abuse victim or heal any broken hearts. What it does do is take away focus from the people who are forgotten in all of this – the victims.