BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Brian MacQuarrie
Globe Staff
January 04, 2012
Ten years after revelations of clergy sexual abuse rocked the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, victims of the scandal said yesterday that they remained unmoved by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s plea for forgiveness.
Instead, victims and advocates reacted to O’Malley’s written retrospective on the crisis with a demand that the church do more to make survivors confident that abusive clerics will be punished and that future cases will not be shrouded in secrecy.
“The church has failed miserably, miserably, miserably,’’ said Bernie McDaid, 55, of Peabody, who was abused in the late 1960s in Salem.
“Nothing has been done [except] whatever the court has made them do,’’ he said. “I’m so hurt by all this.
“After Penn State erupted, it put it right back in my face,’’ McDaid said, referring to a string of abuse charges filed recently against a former assistant football coach at the university. …
Questions about the archdiocese’s enthusiasm for the task were echoed by Phil Saviano, 59, of Roslindale, who founded the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
The changes outlined by O’Malley, Saviano said, are “basic, common-sense procedures that any organization that has a lot of contact with children would take.’’
“It’s probably good for him to enumerate the things they’ve done,’’ he said, “but they’re not things that are that remarkable. I don’t think it’s anything to brag about.’’
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