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FULLERTON — A priest posing as a police chaplain who pleaded guilty in Jan. to molesting two young girls has been sentenced to 5 years in state prison. Fr. Fernando Deliz, 67, agreed to a last-minute plea-bargain with prosecutors. He admitted that he molested two girls, ages 8 and 11, between Aug. 1996 and June 1999.

Police Sgt. Joe Klein said Deliz preyed on his victims by falsely impersonating a Fullerton Police Department chaplain. Deliz volunteered at the Brookhurst First Baptist Church in Fullerton and was a member of the Florida-based National Chaplains Assn. He was arrested in Aug.1999 and has been in county jail since then.
LA Times, 3/8/00

TAMPA — A former minister faces up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to receiving child pornography on his computer.

Lawrence Kilbourne, 43, wept at the hearing, but later spoke calmly when a magistrate asked if he understood the consequences of pleading guilty. Kilbourne resigned as pastor of Forest Hills United Methodist Church in Oct. shortly after his arrest. He told the 500 parishioners in the church he founded that he had a sexual addiction.

FBI agents found thousands of images of child pornography on his computer that his daughter discovered after becoming suspicious of her father because he flirted with young girls at restaurants. She notified authorities after finding in his church-owned home a videotape of a man fondling a young child,which she feared was him.

He faces life in prison if convicted of capital sexual battery for allegedly molesting his daughter's friend during a sleepover in 1994. He admitted that he fondled the girl while she slept after prosecutors confronted him with the videotape he made of the incident. Kilbourne wept in court before pleading guilty to the pornography charges.

Authorities seized more than 200 videotapes and 15,000 computer files from Kilbourne's home. Some of the items depicted toddler and preadolescent children posed or engaged in sexual conduct.

Kilbourne pleaded guilty to federal charges of receiving the explicit computer files. He also faces state charges of sexual battery on a child under age 16 for the alleged videotaped molestation. A trial on that charge was set to begin in April. Investigators also were checking allegations that Kilbourne had improper contact with members of his church youth group, as well as children from the church day care center.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2/4/00; AP, 2/3 [see http://www.thelinkup.com/crimes00a.html -- RD]

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I found these with very little effort.

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Question here. If 'all reference to the supernatural is superfluous to scientific investigation' why is the idea of a god even then a consideration?

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It's not. To the best of my knowledge, that's what 'superfluous' means.

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If by definition god is 'supernatural' then god should not exist in a natural explanation.

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Correct. Again, to the best of my knowledge, that's what 'superfluous' means.

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If the supernatural is not required to explain things, why, then is it considered 'honest' to perpetuate the myth of the existence of the supernatural?

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"Why is it 'honest' to perpetuate a myth?" is rught up there with "when did you stop beating your wife?". There's a difference between being honest and being correct. I disagree with Martin Gardner's religious views. I don't believe he is dishonest.

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Perpetrators with an exclusive interest in children are labeled fixated by some researchers. Fixation means "a temporary or permanent arrestment of psychological maturation resulting from unresolved formative issues which persist and underlie the organization of subsequent phases of development" (Groth & Birnbaum, 1978, p. 176). Put in simple terms, fixated offenders are "stuck" at an early stage of psychological development.

By contrast, other molesters are described as regressed. Regression is "a temporary or permanent appearance of primitive behavior after more mature forms of expression had been attained, regardless of whether the immature behavior was actually manifested earlier in the individual's development" (Groth & Birnbaum, 1978, p. 177). Regressed offenders have developed an adult sexual orientation but under certain conditions (such as extreme stress) they return to an earlier, less mature psychological state and engage in sexual contact with children.

Fixated offenders never developed an adult sexual orientation of any sort, whereas regressed molesters have done so. Thus, regressed molesters can be adult homosexuals, heterosexuals, or bisexuals. But it is meaningless to speak of fixated molesters in these terms – they are attracted to children, not to men or women.

Using this distinction, Groth and Birnbaum (1978) found that none of the 175 adult males in their sample – all of whom were convicted in Massachusetts of sexual assault against a child – had an exclusively homosexual adult sexual orientation. 83 of the men (47%) were classified as "fixated;" 70 others (40%) were classified as regressed adult heterosexuals; the remaining 22 (13%) were classified as regressed adult bisexuals. Of the last group, Groth and Birnbaum observed that "in their adult relationships they engaged in sex on occasion with men as well as with women. However, in no case did this attraction to men exceed their preference for women....There were no men who were primarily sexually attracted to other adult males..." (p.180).

Another researcher took a different perspective. Dr. Carole Jenny reviewed 352 medical charts, representing all of the sexually abused children seen in the emergency room or child abuse clinic of a Denver children's hospital during a one-year period (from July 1, 1991 to June 30, 1992). The molester was a gay or lesbian adult in only 2 of the 269 cases in which an adult molester could be identified, less than 1% of the cases (Jenny et al., 1994).

In yet another approach to studying adult sexual attraction to children, some Canadian researchers observed how homosexual and heterosexual adult men responded to slides of males and females of various ages (child, pubescent, and mature adult). All of the research subjects were first screened to ensure that they preferred physically mature sexual partners. In some of the slides shown to subjects, the model was clothed; in others, he or she was nude. The slides were accompanied by audiotaped recordings. The recordings paired with the nude models described an imaginary sexual interaction between the model and the subject. The recordings paired with the pictures of clothed models described the model engaging in neutral activities (e.g., swimming). To measure sexual arousal, changes in the subjects' penis volume were monitored while they watched the slides and listened to the audiotapes. The researchers found that homosexual males responded no more to male children than heterosexual males responded to female children (Freund et al., 1989).

[see http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html - RD]

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As an ex Catholic meself I would believe just about any story I heard about that sick lot. Back home in Ireland we had a scandal with the Sisters of Mercy that makes this look like a walk in the park. The good sisters had a number of children's corpses on their hands.

But I was wondering Dr Shari why are you trying to distance homosexuals from this scandal when the only pedophiles involved are homosexuals comitting homosexual child molestation? No one brought up that aspect of these crimes except you. "Brides of Christ" is a title left over from the middle ages when it had a different connotation not somebody calling them sissy boys.

[emphasis added - RD]

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