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  Abuse Group Wants Vatican Employees to Help Prosecute Pope

Monsters and Critics
September 20, 2011

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1664043.php/Abuse-group-wants-Vatican-employees-to-help-prosecute-pope

Rome - An international group for victims of sexual abuse by priests on Tuesday urged current and former Vatican employees to share any information that could help prosecute Pope Benedict XVI before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

'Hundreds of current and former Vatican employees have information about sexual assaults against children,' Peter Isley of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement issued by the group.

'Silence is complicity. It's time for church employees at every level to search their consciences and share their knowledge of these crimes and cover ups,' Isley added.

SNAP representatives made the appeal at a news conference held at a Rome hotel not far from Vatican City. Also attending were five adults who the group said were abused as children by priests.

The US-based SNAP last week filed a complaint to the ICC charging high-level church officials with what it said was the 'systematic and widespread practice of enabling, concealing and tolerating on-going rape and other forms of sexual violence by clerics across the globe.'

SNAP represents victims from several countries including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States where the Catholic Church has been rocked by revelations of abuse.

Pope Benedict has expressed shame and sorrow over the clerical sex scandal and has called on bishops around the world to come up with common guidelines against pedophiles by May 2012.

 
 

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