A Challenge to Journalists: Where “spotlights” Are Needed Now

Hamilton and Griffin on Rights
January 12, 2016

http://hamilton-griffin.com/snap-update-a-challenge-to-journalists-where-spotlights-are-needed-now/

Over the past few months, the film “Spotlight” has justifiably garnered a lot of attention and praise. It’s about how a team of Boston Globe reporters shined a long-overdue “spotlight” on the Boston archdiocese and its decades of successfully hiding clergy sex crimes.

For a few years afterwards, to a much lesser degree, other journalists did similar investigations in other US Catholic dioceses.

But public attention wanes quickly. And bishops aren’t dumb. They responded by doubling down on secrecy and hiring more expert public relations firms. They launched, and still relentlessly implement, a shrewd PR campaign: admitting what couldn’t be denied but minimizing it, shifting blame, offering apologies and making promises, while clamping down an even-tighter lid on their long-held, potentially devastating secrets.

So much remains hidden.

Here are nine places where “spotlights” are sorely needed now:

1—Church staff and defenders TALK of “zero tolerance.” But that’s the official church policy in only a handful of western democracies (as our colleagues at BishopAccountability.org point out). Across the vast majority of the world, bishops refuse to even promise – much less implement – “zero tolerance.” Why have virtually no news outlets reported this simple but telling fact?

2—Hundreds of priests who’ve been convicted, suspended or accused in one country have been sent or have gone abroad, only to work or live among unsuspecting families and colleagues. Not a single bishop, as best we can tell, has yanked a single passport from a single predator priest. Why is that? Not a single discussion has been held (unless behind closed doors) among church officials about this disturbing and likely growing practice. Why have just a few journalists (Brooks Egerton, Will Carless) reported this?

3—“We didn’t understand. We’re learning.” That’s the carefully-crafted, oft-repeated but disingenuous mantra of Catholic officials across the US (and increasingly, the rest of the world). If that’s true, and evidence suggests it’s not, then why has that “learning” stopped? Where’s the evidence that weak, vague, hastily-adopted church abuse policies are being strengthened, as bishops supposedly “learn” more about predators? It’s not happening.

4—Remember the National Review Board? That’s the body that was set up in 2002 to allegedly monitor whether US bishops were honoring their pledges of reform. Heard anything about or from them for the last few years? We haven’t either. Despite initially hopeful signs, they’ve become a “toothless tiger.” The purported “watchdog” has become a “lap dog.”

5—About 15 Catholic dioceses and religious orders have exploited bankruptcy laws to avoid trials, depositions and discovery of secret records concealing predator priests. As best we can tell, no national news outlet has looked at these 15 cases and written about “the big picture,” explaining the impact and implications of these legal maneuvers. Why is that?

6—In each bankruptcy, church officials claimed “we’re doing this so all survivors are fairly compensated,” not just the first one or two who go to trial and win huge verdicts. If this is true, why do some church officials, like Milwaukee’s Archbishop Jerome Listecki, formally challenge the vast majority of the hundreds of victims who file claims? Why have nearly no journalists or commentators noted this stunning contradiction: a bishop verbally saying “we want to help every victim” but legally saying “we want to help almost no victims?”

7—On a related note, in each bankruptcy case, bishops claim that they have “no choice” but to file for bankruptcy protection. That’s baloney. They have tons of options to raise money if they want to “do right” by survivors.

Cardinal Bernard Law, for example, borrowed millions from a Catholic lay organization to settle cases.

And in the Southwest, bishops get low-interest, government-backed loans for church buildings. How? By telling lenders that if their dioceses go “belly up,” their brother bishops are obligated to “pitch in” and pay their debts.

Yet in abuse cases, each bishop pretends to be nearly impoverished and entirely disconnected from the worldwide church: “Ours is a small, poor diocese. We just don’t have the funds,” bishops repeatedly claim.

8—And in Milwaukee, bankruptcy recently ended, leaving the identities of almost 100 accused predator priests hidden. Why is no one, besides our courageous Wisconsin SNAP members, exposing and expressing outrage over this?

9—Thousands of predator priests, we suspect, are not defrocked. They live, we believe, among unsuspecting families with no supervision, posing active dangers to kids, with many of them working or volunteering as teachers, coaches and therapists.

Just two recent examples: An ousted Minnesota predator priest, Fr. Michael Charland, now works as a psychologist. An ousted New Hampshire priest, Fr. Mark Fleming, is now a Unitarian minister.

Dozens of predator priests, we believe, live quietly in church facilities with purported but inadequate oversight and little or no warning to neighbors.

And dozens in the US are still on the job. Here’s a list of the ones we found recently.

Since Catholic officials recruit, educate, ordain, hire, train, transfer and shield these child molesting clerics, don’t they have some duty to put them in secure, remote, professionally-run housing and/or treatment facilities and tell parents, parishioners, police and the public who and where they are?

So come on journalists! Yes, resources are tight and news outlets are understaffed. But don’t just watch and applaud Spotlight and bemoan the ‘good old days’ when newsrooms had more bodies and funds. Maybe you can’t launch a full-scale Spotlight-style investigation. But you CAN do more to expose the backsliding, hypocrisy and broken promises and continued recklessness in and by the Catholic hierarchy.