Keep Hope Alive: Boston Globe Misleads Readers About Annual Abuse Audit To Keep Old Story Line On Life Support

By David Pierre
Media Report
May 23, 2016

http://www.themediareport.com/2016/05/23/boston-globe-anti-catholic/

Working tirelessly together against the Catholic Church: SNAP director David Clohessy (l), Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory (c), and BishopAccountability's Terry McKiernan (r)

The Boston Globe simply will not give up.

The newly released annual audit report by United States bishops about abuse in the Catholic Church amplifies the rampancy of false accusations, unprovable allegations against dead priests, dubious decades-old claims, and the determination of Church-suing tort lawyers and their allies to drain the Church's coffers.

Yet in an article by staffer Matt Rocheleau, the Boston Globe continues to try to convince the public that abuse is somehow still a current problem in the Catholic Church.

The facts the Globe is hiding

Taken straight from the data in this year's audit report, here are the simple facts about the Catholic Church abuse story you will never, ever see in the Boston Globe and which once again only underscore that the abuse story is a Globe obsession borne of animus for an institution which it so abhors:

• 93% of all abuse accusations last year allege incidents from at least 21 years ago;
• 41% of all identified priests who were accused in 2015 were already long deceased;
• 80% of all identified priests who were accused in 2015 were either already deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or simply missing; and
• less than 14% of all allegations last year were even deemed "substantiated," while nearly three quarters of the accusations were deemed either "unsubstantiated," "unable to be proven," or still under review.

In other words, the story of abuse in the Catholic Church is less "news" and more of an attempt to extend a story line that croaked many years ago.

And the only real reason why lawsuits and accusations are still flying against the Catholic Church is that a number of states have enacted "window legislation" which enables anonymous accusers to make decades-old allegations against now-deceased priests. Naturally, this important aspect of the story was completely left out of the Globe's reporting.

Turning to lawyer-funded haters

In yet another example of the Globe throwing all perspective and objectivity out the window, Rocheleau turns to lawyer-funded "advocates" David Clohessy, from SNAP, and Terry McKiernan, from BishopAccountability, two reliably anti-Catholic sources for the Globe's fodder. (Apparently, Rocheleau was unable to reach the Ku Klux Klan for comment.)

Even though Clohessy and McKiernan did not provide a single shred of documentation to support their wild claims, Rocheleau uncritically relayed the pair's assertions that the Church's annual independent audit reports are somehow "flawed," "deceptive," and that "holes still remain."

But if there are any "holes" in anything, it is in the Boston Globe's reporting. As we reported earlier this year, when Boston station WCVB determined that "in recent years, on average, the licenses of 15 Massachusetts educators are suspended or revoked each year for sexual misconduct," the Globe did not find this the least bit interesting enough to report or even explore further.

Of course not. Because the Boston Globe's reporting has absolutely nothing to do with the "protection of children" or the tragic abuse of kids. It has everything to do with bludgeoning the Catholic Church for what it stands for and earning kudos from others – such as those in Hollywood – who also detest the Church.