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	Victims of Predator Priests Want Vatican Action, Not Pledges Raw Story April 21, 2010 http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Victims_of_predator_priests_want_Va_04212010.html A US support group for victims of predator priests Wednesday called on the Vatican to get tough on predator priests and fight to change laws that protect abusers rather than the children they have abused. "We want the Vatican to take concrete action to really protect children, like firing corrupt bishops and establishing a website with a database of the names of those who have molested children," Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) told AFP. "We want the Church also to support reforms of secular laws that shield predators," in particular statutes of limitations, which often prevent pedophile priests from being brought to justice, she said hours after Pope Benedict XVI had pledged Church action against clerics who abuse children. "Child victims cannot tell for the most part and the average age a victim reports is in their 40s," Blaine, who is in her 50s and was abused by a priest when she was a girl, said. "But the statute of limitations in many US states and most countries in the world are set up in such a way that they support predators and not children or victims. "By the time we are able to report our abuse, we are well into adulthood and the statute of limitations are already past," she said. Amid a deepening worldwide crisis over how the Catholic Church has managed the sex abuse scandal, the pope said during his weekly address in Rome that the Church was taking action against predator priests. Blaine said the pope's promise of action would amount to little more than ineffective policy tweaks. "He'll announce a zero-tolerance policy which will sound reassuring but change little," Blaine said. Benedict, who met Sunday with victims of predator priests in Malta, has come under increasing pressure over allegations that the Vatican hierarchy, himself included, helped protect predator priests.
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