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Des Moines bishop: No justification for clergy abuse, cover-up cited in Pennsylvania report
By Shelby Fleig
Des Moines Bishop Richard Pates on Thursday called the child sex abuse by hundreds of Pennsylvania priests, detailed in a 900-page report made public this week, a "great moral failure." "There is no way that we can justify this, neither on the behalf of those who have committed the abuse among young people, nor the failure of our leadership in trying to protect them," he said. Pates joined the Vatican in publicly condemning the report's findings of systematic abuse. "We showed no care for the little ones," wrote Pope Francis in a letter Monday, almost a week after the report was released. "We abandoned them." The product of a two-year grand jury investigation ordered by Pennsylvania's Attorney General, the report is one of the most comprehensive looks into such abuse by the Catholic church in history. In the report, at least 300 priests in six of the state’s eight dioceses are accused of abusing more than 1,000 children since the 1940s. The report also says the Catholic Church engaged in a “systematic cover-up’’ by moving abusive priests from one parish to another. Ten other state-level investigations — all on the East Coast — have documented similar abuse by clergy since 2002, according to BishopAccountability.org. Some victims' advocates are calling for attorneys general across the country to launch their own investigations. But no such investigation will be ordered in Iowa. Attorney General Tom Miller does not have the authority, unlike his Pennsylvania counterpart, to launch a statewide investigative grand jury, said Lynn Hicks, the attorney general’s communications director. “We don’t have the same authority,” Hicks said in an email. “We are not a criminal investigative agency; we prosecute cases that are referred to us by county attorneys.” Iowa dioceses have paid millions to settle sex abuse cases in the past two decades, the largest settlements happening over the course of years in Davenport and Dubuque. In 2004, the Davenport diocese paid $9 million to settle 37 claims against eastern Iowa priests. After filing for bankruptcy in 2006, the Davenport diocese in 2007 paid another $37 million to 156 more victims. In 2006, the Archdiocese of Dubuque paid $5 million to settle 20 claims against nine priests. The next year, the Archdiocese paid an additional $2.6 million to settle more claims. Then in 2013, the Archdiocese paid another $5.2 million to settle 26 claims of sex abuse. John Chambers, a lifelong Des Moines resident, settled with the city diocese in 2007 for what he described as years of repeated assaults by a Des Moines priest. The statute of limitations made it impossible to file criminal charges. Chambers, 66, said his life has been marred by his memories of those crimes. “I struggled with my faith in the church and I’ve now lost faith in the Catholic church,” he said. “I still have issues of trust with authority figures and issues with feeling safe.” Chambers is part of the support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Pates said he's investigated one case of sex abuse in the diocese since his start in 2008, which led to the defrocking of Howard Fitzgerald in 2014. In 2002, the Des Moines diocese hired victim assistance advocate and ordered thousands of background checks for church workers. "It's a serious threat to peoples' faith when they feel betrayed in term of their faith," Pates said. "But 90 or 95 percent of our priests have never failed morally at this level. So we must support our good priests, but where there is evidence of moral failure to this extent, we have to address it." Contact: advocate@dmdiocese.org
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