Church culpable. F R Halpin's back with this strangely worded question for me: "Can a community grow with self-murder [he means suicide but prefers his own type of offensive arch-Catholic rhetoric] being a rule of thumb?"
I'd like to help him out with some facts and figures about at least one cause of NZ's tragically high rate of suicide, which brings lifelong grief to so many families and friends of those who cannot bear to face another day.
I hope the NZ Catholic church succeeds in its plea to undergo the scrutiny of the pending NZ Government inquiry into historical abuse of children in state care. Meanwhile,
Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse ran for five years before reporting last year. It noted that of the 1880 alleged perpetrators from within the Catholic Church, 572 were priests. Of sexual abuse survivors who gave evidence in the private sessions 19.8 per cent said they had suicidal thoughts and 16.4 per cent said they had attempted suicide.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=12024364
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=12024364