Child molesters shouldn’t go to jail for a first offense.

An actual New York friar says we should have sympathy for child molesters because the children seduced them. Y’all. I read this article and halfway through I was like “The Onion is usually funnier than this.” I thought this *had* to be satire, but Father Benedict Groeschel actually said this. And more. This just takes “blaming the victim” to a whole new level of ridiculous.

This man is clearly a child molester.

You can try to convince me otherwise, but you’re gonna be hard pressed to make me believe that any normal man with no pedophile tendencies would actually accuse 12 year old boys of seducing grown men.

A prominent New York-based friar has sympathy for some pedophiles — including defrocked priests and former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky — saying they are sometimes “seduced” by their underage victims.

Father Benedict Groeschel’s jarring comments come amid ongoing fallout from child sex abuse scandals that have rocked Penn State and, over the past decade, the Catholic Church.

In some of these cases, children “looking for a father figure” are responsible for the relationship with someone in a position of power — like a coach or clergy member, Groeschel told the National Catholic Register.

“Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster - 14, 16, 18 - is the seducer,” said Groeschel, a founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

Pressed on the point, Father Groeschel says “It’s not so hard to see - a kid looking for a father and didn’t have his own - and they won’t be planning to get into heavy-duty sex, but almost romantic, embracing, kissing.”

The Westchester-based friar — who maintains a prominent position in the Catholic Church, doing outreach in the Bronx and Brooklyn and appearing on a weekly religious television show — doesn’t think an adult who has a sexual relationship with a child should be punished for a first offense.

“I’m inclined to think, on their first offense, they should not go to jail because their intention was not committing a crime.”

He also has some sympathy for Jerry Sandusky, convicted in June of 45 counts of sexual abuse of boys.

“Here’s this poor guy - Sandusky - it went on for years. Interesting: Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

Witnesses and victims didn’t necessarily see the abuse as a crime, he proposed.

“It was a moral failure, scandalous; but they didn’t think of it in terms of legal things.”

(full story)

This is supposed to be a man of god, a man of the highest moral fiber, and he thinks fatherless boys are seducing pedophiles because they’re lonely? I could almost understand if he said the boys were seeking father-like attention from men and those creeps misread the signs. But nope. He straight up said they were looking for “embracing, kissing.”

So you just make out with your father now? Is that what we do now? This is insane and this man is a creep.

Is it just little boy diddling that gets a pass on the first offense, or other crimes too? If I commit a murder, do I get a pass because I only did it once? If I steal some money, do I get to avoid jail because it was the first time? I mean damn son, at least those can be spur of the moment crimes. Sandusky did this over and over and over to a multitude of boys, and this Father has sympathy for him? Does it ALL count as the first offense because he only got caught and tried once? Would it be just one offense if it was just with one boy?

Y’all need to RESEARCH Father Benedict, I’m telling you. There is no way this dude hasn’t left a score of abused boys in his wake. He is trying way too hard to justify pedophilia not to have some skeletons in his closet. Nobody other than a child molester would think this way. I’ma need for somebody to launch an investigation into this man like yesterday….