Welcome to West Babylon
A popular Long Island priest was arrested yesterday on child pornography charges after investigators raided a church rectory and found his computer packed with dirty pictures.
Authorities said the Rev. Thomas Saloy tried to kill himself earlier this week after the FBI discovered 1,300 still photographs and video clips of children engaged in sexually explicit activities.
The frail-looking 45-year-old pleaded not guilty yesterday in a federal court in Central Islip to criminal charges that could put him in prison for 10 years.
Federal Magistrate Michael Orenstein ordered Saloy held in a hospital psychiatric ward.
Saloy came to the attention of authorities recently after a kiddie-porn peddler was busted in Milwaukee. Agents traced e-mail messages to Saloy’s AOL account, according to a criminal complaint.
He allegedly trolled for teen boys in Internet chat rooms called Gayfathers and Dudes4dudes, seeking sexually explicit images, and admitted he “went online posing as a 15-year-old boy to engage other 15-year-old boys in sexual chats,” the complaint states.
The diocese, which has 1.5 million Catholics, was one of the centers of the priest-abuse scandal in the U.S. A grand jury in 2003 found dozens of priests allegedly abused children across Long Island, but no indictments were handed down because the statutes of limitations had expired long ago.
It seems to me — maybe some other folks as well — that putting your own house in order is required before you spend time and energy and money organizing the morality of the world.
NO!
DON’T SAY ITS TRUE!!!!
I refuse to believe that a leader in a church could be guilty of horrible crimes.
/extreme sarcasm off
Given that I am a young man (boy) and have a pretty comprehensive technical knowledge of computers, I could make a fortune installing Truecrypt on these pederast’s computers.
This guy can’t even kill himself. His parents failed.
And the Catholic Church wonders why they are losing parishoners in droves.
Can we impeach the Pope?
There’s a shocker!
Let us know when you find a religious head with no skeletons.
Yawn. This is so common, it barely merits comment. Which is awful, of course.
But you know, it isn’t just the priests. I know of cases where Commanding Officers of Boy Cadets were busted. I know of the most respected public school teachers and community leaders who were ditto. The list actually goes on and on.
My point is not in the least to defend the priest but simply to note that the most honorable and apparently benign in our communities can be trusted not to be trusted.
How do you deal with that fact when it comes to the shear numbers of volunteer adults needed to lead children (ie: Boy/Girl Scouts)?
RBG
But you know, it isn’t just the priests. I know of cases where Commanding Officers of Boy Cadets were busted. I know of the most respected public school teachers and community leaders who were ditto. The list actually goes on and on.
My point is not in the least to defend the priest but simply to note that the most honorable and apparently benign in our communities can be trusted not to be trusted.
How do you deal with that fact when it comes to the shear numbers of volunteer adults needed to lead children (eg: Boy/Girl Scouts)?
RBG
I think they should give him another chance to kill himself.
RBG, I don’t know which of your posts to respond to so I’ll just throw this out there.
(/humor)
You are very correct and I agree all abuse is very serious.
Where I disagree is that Priests enjoy a special place in our society that is greater then teachers or Boy Scout Leaders. After the past few years of abuse revelations in the Catholic Church, we all hoped this problem would have diminished. The Catholic Church told us how they were instituting programs to identify and help Priests deal with mental issues in general and pedophiles in particular.
I also don’t want to confine my condemnation to child sex abuse. Anyone is a position of authority that abuses those he is to help needs to be dealt with severely.
My first response what that this priest’s behavior only verged on actually doing something wrong.
Then I thought of my visceral reaction to snuff films, which is that the makers oughtta be summarily snuffed. Those who make snuff films profitable by paying to see them should be, what, maybe fined big-time since they have disposable income they clearly misuse.
Snuff the snuff-movie makers but excuse the priest who buys child porn as only verging on doing an actual wrong act? I might need to reexamine my assumptions here.
11. I don’t understand, where do I say anything about Priests enjoying a special place in our society? I meant to just lump them all together. And if my words came out otherwise, there was no intention of such.
But now, let me make just that point since you raise it. For Catholic and other believers – who has more intimate access to and influence upon a person other than a priest? (Think confession, absolution, eternal damnation, direct line to God, community leadership, scary rituals, cool hats.)
I blame the double post on either Captcha or Clinton. Captcha leads you to a dead end, whereupon you need to use the back button to get you back to the original item at which time you need to refresh the item to see the new post… but if you are asleep, it’s easy to hit “Say It!” instead causing a re-post.
RBG
Guys, I got an extra $.02 to throw out here.
In my considerably less than stellar opinion, whenever a society demands unreachable standards from unspeakable characters, you get crapola like this from the players involved. Kinda like politicians I can remember hearing some schtuff about, recently ?
Ok, I’m sorry for interjecting the political comment but, it kinda fits with the whole mess we see around us year after year….
I guess, if you have a job that requires some pretty sane, rational, crtical thinking, non-emotional skills to perform you should probably recruit people accordingly, unless the folks doing the recruiting are just as flawed as the recruits….maybe we can get us one of them new robots ? Dunno, it’s nice to believe we can do better but, I been waiting for “better” a long time.
For centuries the catholic church has apparently kept hands off the priests with their hands on way of administering the Lord’s will, apparently rationalizing their actions as a sort of “perk” for the guys who were forbidden to kadoodle with the ladies. But that whole celibacy thing is off the scale creepy, and what can you expect from someone who is both forbidden normal sexual release and constantly exposed to youngsters of both sexes? Although I wonder about the preference for boys, but then, I don’t travel in that world.