New Vatican Abuse Policy Could Lift ‘culture of Secrecy’
By Thomas Gnau
A new directive requiring Vatican City personnel and diplomats to immediately report abuse allegations may represent a step toward lifting a “culture of secrecy” at the independent city-state that anchors the Catholic Church worldwide, said Dennis Doyle, a Catholic theologian and professor at the University of Dayton. “It’s almost similar to what you find in police departments,” Doyle said Friday. “Some people are corrupt; some people are not. But people are reluctant to turn in other people.” The mandatory reporting provision, while limited in scope, marks the first time the Vatican has put into law requirements for Catholic officials to report allegations of sex crimes to police or face fines and possible jail time, the Associated Press reported.Added Doyle: “This makes it actually a crime not to report incidents of sex abuse. And it specifies whom this has to be reported to, which are the Vatican prosecutors, who are going to be trained to rise above the culture of secrecy.”Locally, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati has had a mandatory reporting requirement for allegations of abuse since 1993, said Mike Schafer, a spokesman for the archdiocese. The Cincinnati decree stipulates that all archdiocese employees and volunteers who work with children – including bishops, priests, and deacons – are subject to fingerprinting and background checks, training on recognizing the signs of abuse of children and vulnerable adults — and “mandatory immediate reporting” of abuse to civil authorities, as Schafer described the policy.In practice, that means a report of an allegation is directed “usually (to) the prosecutor’s office of the county in which the alleged abuse occurred,” Schafer said in an email to this newspaper. The policy works, he said.“As of this writing, there are no active cases of clerical abuse of minors anywhere in the archdiocese,” Schafer said.The new Vatican norms apply only to Vatican City State, affiliated institutions and the city-state’s diplomatic corps, the Associated Press reported. The law also represents the first time the Vatican has defined who are the “vulnerable people” who are entitled to the same protections as minors under church law.The Vatican amended its canon law covering sex abuse to include “vulnerable adults” in 2010, but never precisely defined it, the AP said.Dan Frondorf, a leader of the Dayton-Cincinnati branch of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, welcomed news of the policy but had questions about whether the norms would be honored and implemented honestly.“My initial reaction is what took them so long,” Frondorf said. “This pope has a history of saying a bunch of things but not taking any action. I’m afraid this might be another thing that he says or policy that they have that really won’t be enforced.”Frondorf wondered if Vatican prosecutors, to whom allegations are to be reported, will have independent power to truly prosecute crimes.“They should go to the real prosecutors,” he said.If the requirement involves an authentic application of criminal law in a sovereign nation, then perhaps it’s a step in the right direction, he said. Frondorf said he is skeptical of “self-inspection” or “self-reporting.”“Generally, I’m not a fan of self-reporting,” Frondorf said. “That’s what’s got them into this mess for decades.”Frondorf, 52, accused then-Father Lawrence Strittmatter of abusing him as a 17-year-old Elder High School student. (A phone number for Strittmatter was disconnected Friday. He has previously declined comment on multiple occasions.)Schafer said the Cincinnati Archdiocese works with a “lay-dominated” child protection review board, currently including an abuse survivor, which reviews and advises the archdiocese on all child abuse allegations. There is also an active ministry to survivors of abuse, he said.
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