Avoidance in Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

The Tango
April 17, 2012

http://2012-6209-tango.blogspot.com/2012/04/avoidance-in-child-sexual-abuse-in.html




Introduction

In recent years there has been an increased attention towards the Catholic Church and the sex scandals and child abuse cases that has been going on behind closed doors. To name a few of those incidents, there is the case where a Priest from Ireland abused an 8 year old child, and thereafter the Priest, with permission from the Bishop, paid her family a lump sum so they would not mention it. Another case is a German scandal, where a Priest sexually harassed kids, and Bishops knew about it without taking immediate action. This case is particularly interesting because the current pope was acting Arch Bishop in that period.

The Catholic Sex Scandal is and has been a big conflict for a long time, and the way that the church has handled it bears the marks of trying to avoid the conflict by suppressing it. We will illustrate and analyze this from the perspectives of Trust, Knowledge Management, Culture, Image Restoration and Crisis Management.