Imagine that you dedicate your whole life to one organization. You give countless hours of your time, and make huge sacrifices to work there. Then, one day, you find out that a coworker of yours has been sexually abusing your own child. Now, can you guess what happened next? Was it a) the organization punished the culprit, b) they apologized to the family and gave some form of compensation, or c) did nothing? Well, if the organization is the catholic church in Lafayette, then you do option d) throw the child rapist a goodbye party, and use your massive wealth to pressure the state’s supreme court to get rid of laws that would give a legal window to allow such institutions to get sued by victims. You can’t make this stuff up.

Michael Guidry, now 78, later pleaded guilty to abusing Oliver Peyton, who was an altar boy. And after Guidry’s church honored him with a goodbye luncheon for which the diocese was forced to apologize, he received a seven-year prison sentence.

That’s not all. When Scott Payton found out about the molestation, he did something most priests refuse to do: he actually bothered to do something about it. First, in 2021, he secured a $350,000 judgement against the Lafayette diocese, a paltry sum for sure, but more than most victims tend to get. Secondly, he actually fought against the churches effort to repeal laws that would allow victims to seek compensation, calling them unconstitutional. As a reward for his hard work, Payton was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

Keep in mind that the Church has never excommunicated any of their members for actually raping kids. That’s forgivable. But going after the Churches money? That’s going too far! We’re non believers, so something as silly as excommunication might seem pretty trivial to us. It is a spiritual death sentence for believers, however. Payton correctly argued that such actions send a chilling message to people who have been abused: talk about it, and we’ll make sure you go to hell.

Now, what find sad in all of this is Payton hasn’t discarded the very beliefs that created the problem in the first place. He still thinks that his belief system can still be redeemed somehow.

“[This] has deeply shaken my faith and trust in the institution to which I have dedicated a significant portion of my life,” Peyton said in his resignation email to Deshotel, which was shared with the Guardian. “This decision is not a rejection of my faith in God or my commitment to living a life guided by Christian principles. Instead, it reflects … a desire to distance myself from an institution that, currently, falls short of the values it professes.”

Falls short? Desires a distance? This guy just admitted that the church does nothing but throw parties for child rapists, and this is considered “falling short”? You have to have your head buried in the sand pretty deep to consider an institution that cast you into the fires of hell for daring to ask for accountability as “falling short”. Does it need to also be engaged in money laundering, or murder to finally get off this dog and pony show? I got news for you: they do that, and much worse, and yet, there are still millions of people convinced that these men are holy. It’s frankly baffling.

So note to self: these guys can rape your own kid, and that still won’t shake your faith in them. Good to know there is no level of depravity low enough for the rest of the world to open their eyes in the face of such fucking evil.