Time for States to Address Priest Abuse

Xavier Newswirre
March 20, 2019

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/Time%20for%20states%20to%20address%20priest%20abuse

Headlines of abuse dominated news cycles in August 2018 after the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report released the names of hundreds of priests who had sexually abused children for more than seven decades. Since then, evidence of the global epidemic within the Catholic Church of sexual abuse of the innocent has continued to surface. The Associated Press publishes a new article nearly every week about new investigations, diocese reports, complaints by survivor advocacy groups and continued corruption. This sex abuse does not only mar religious institutions. Since places of worship have acted as the backbone of communities for centuries, this festering wound underlying the fabric of our secular institutions reaches from sea to shining sea.

But the grand jury report was eight months ago, and the public is more numbed than motivated to demand change. The 300 predatory priests’ names that were just released by dioceses in Texas, the confirmation that the Catholic Church has destroyed documents proving they were aware of priests’ predatory behavior and even the confirmation that six Jesuits who worked with Xavier as recently as 2002 were credibly accused of sexual assault read as old news. What is even more stale to read is how states are not stepping in.

Dioceses have conducted their own internal audits to oust sexual predators since the Boston Globe exposed the misdeeds of then-priest James G. Geoghan in 2002. That year, clergy leaders from across the nation committed to a set of policies called the Dallas Charter. These policies seek to prevent child sex abuse as well as make the names of known abusers available to both law authorities and the public for the safety of parishioners.