Social media helped us to recognize the fact that the social acceptance is a significant factor in human life. People do certain risky things for their social media contents. Some others do silly and funny things to amuse others. Yet another group of people attract the viewers by opening up their private life in the…
There were many traumatic events in connection with the recent landslides in Wayanad. One of such events captured the attention of the social media in the last week. It was the personal sharing of a mother named Sujatha and her granddaughter Mrudula. In a voice filled with sadness, she narrates an episode of her rainy…
Along with the personal reasons, there can have some situational stressors and social factors behind child sexual abuse offences by clerics. These situational stressors do not cause abuse but serve as ‘triggers’. Shifting from one place to another–initially from family to seminary, seminary to parish and one parish to another–is a general fact in the…
A healthy self-esteem among students had become a focal point of education policy by the 1980s in the United States and obligatory by the 1990s. They used methods suggested by popular psychology, such as games involving a group of students and teachers talking about how much they like themselves, and a similar ‘self-esteem programme’. It…
There are various theories which explains the etiology of child sexual abusive behaviour of a perpetrator. Among them ‘attachment theories’ and ‘developmental theories’ find the dysfunctional parenting and childhood traumas as the root of such abusive behaviours. Attachment theories find an interrelation between attachment defects and child sexual abuse behaviour behaviour. Attachment styles in adulthood…
Insights from the therapeutic practises for child sexual abuse offenders explain the correlation between sexual offenders’ self-esteem and their sexual violence towards children. Earlier the treatment for sex offenders addressed the sexual deviance directly, focusing on the behavioural interventions and cognitive interventions. Later more comprehensive treatment programmes were developed to include interventions that targeted self-esteem…
First of all, child sexual abuse is an abusive act which may involve aggression or violence. Self-esteem has shown some correlation with aggressive behaviour in general. Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence (Baumeister et al., 1996, p. 5). Different publications regarding physical abuse towards children has indicated that parental…
‘Maladaptive perfectionism’ is associated with unhealthy self-esteem. Normal perfectionists are reasonable and realistic about self-expectations and usually perform with a realization of their limitations and strengths. Maladaptive perfectionists demand of themselves a higher level of performance than it is usually possible to attain (Rice et al., 1998, pp. 304–305). Since their standards are high and…
The Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, commissioned by the Minister for Justice and Equality, Ireland, makes a serious comment about the long history of CSA prevalence among clerics. “There is a two thousand year history of Biblical, Papal and Holy See statements showing awareness of clerical child sex abuse” (Murphy et…
Diocesan priests experienced significantly more burnout than religious priests. It was the findings of Antony Raj and Karol E. Dean, two researchers in the field of pastoral psychology. They conducted a study among 50 diocesan priests and 51 religious priests randomly selected from two dioceses in South India. Similarly, in 2010 another study by Hans…