The Catholic Priest Abuse Scandal: Next Steps

Chicago Tribune
December 21, 2018

https://www.postbulletin.com/opinion/other_views/editorial-the-catholic-priest-abuse-scandal-next-steps/article_a68733a0-f250-5f3a-a0da-f8e3f20f3343.html

Sixteen years into the scandal of clergy sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, the horrors of these crimes still shock and disgust Americans. The exploitation of children, adolescents and adults by authority figures they had been taught to trust is reprehensible. We’ve written often of the lax, arguably criminal behavior of some local bishops and other church officials who shrouded grave misconduct in secrecy and didn’t share reports of abuses with civil authorities.

In August a report from Pennsylvania’s attorney general cataloged 70 years of such cases in that state. Attorney General Lisa Madigan responded with a comparable effort in Illinois, and on Wednesday her office issued nine pages of preliminary findings about cases in this state’s six dioceses.

The report is a step toward the transparency that’s been uneven in Illinois. The dioceses have had years to disclose credible allegations of abuse in some standardized way that’s easy to comprehend, and accept. For any church officials who haven’t done so, that’s the urgent Job One.

Yet while Madigan’s document includes strong accusations, it doesn’t offer a clue about which church officials allegedly fell short in which diocese, past or present. We hope the final report, whenever it emerges, will be structured to make it more useful to citizens and civil authorities going forward.

We appreciate that Madigan has barely three weeks left in office, and wanted to share some fruit of her staff’s work. Her successor, Kwame Raoul, has a chance to fill in the blanks. Given the severity and sweep of the accusations, the lack of specifics or evidence here leaves us yearning for more detailed information — chiefly the extent to which these problems persist to this day. Among the accusations:

The scope of clergy abuse of minors in Illinois is significantly more extensive than dioceses have previously reported.

Dioceses often disregarded allegations by not investigating them or finding reasons not to substantiate them.

Increased transparency would serve the dioceses’ stated goal of holding clergy accountable and promoting healing for survivors.

“Flawed processes and practices: The Illinois Dioceses’ response to clergy sexual abuses is not uniform across Illinois and is often inadequate.”

Dioceses’ processes often don’t prioritize survivor healing, “particularly when conflicts of interest are present with respect to the Dioceses’ own interests and liabilities.”

We see these findings less as new revelations than as pathways forward for the state, prosecutors and others, including the church. If bad practices persist, we want civil authorities and lawmakers to know that. While the report acknowledges that the dioceses have had different policies and practices in handling complaints, it draws no distinction between dioceses that have moved to make information public and others that evidently have not. Here’s one example of why that matters:

News stories about the report have focused on its finding that, over time, Illinois dioceses logged abuse complaints against some 690 clergy, with 185 of those complaints found credible. The report says that math leaves allegations involving “more than 500 clergy that the Illinois Dioceses have not shared with the public.” The suggestion: Illinois could have had many more predator priests than the church wished to acknowledge. That caught our eye because of previous news coverage on the Archdiocese of Chicago’s practice for some 25 years of handing every allegation to sex crimes prosecutors in the offices of the Cook and Lake County state’s attorneys. (The protocol included a look-back provision giving the authorities access to earlier allegations.)

If some dioceses have kept 500 accusations secret, we want to know who did so. And if some accusations haven’t been shared with the public — the report’s phrase — because criminal prosecutors decided not to take action, we want to know, too, how common that is. But that brings us to the question Madigan’s report provokes but doesn’t address: Should accusations that have been discredited or otherwise found lacking by law enforcement be shared with the public? In other words, it remains unclear to us how many, if any, of the 500 accused clergy should be added to the 185 already proven to have committed wrongdoing.

If we may offer a suggestion to Madigan and Raoul: The final version of this report should include chapters on each of the six dioceses. Tell the people and policymakers of Illinois who has shaped up and who currently is flouting church regulations or civil oversight. That’s what all of us need to know.

We’re acquainted with victims of clergy abuse, and we’ll perpetually condemn what they’ve suffered and their perpetrators. If the attorney general can supplement our anger by giving us metrics or other information that clarifies the past and present scope of this scandal, good. But if it makes no distinction among locales, church officials and their failings, and doesn’t offer some evidence of what is or isn’t happening today, the final report won’t much help Illinois law enforcement and lawmakers decide what, if anything, to do next.