KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
By MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star
The headline on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reads like good news: “Child Protection Audits Find Nearly All Dioceses Compliant.”
What they were complying with, as the accompanying press release explained, was a set of zero-tolerance policies the bishops conference put in place a decade ago in response to the unfolding scandal involving the sexual abuse of children by clergy members.
The view from Kansas City is far less consoling. In September, their bishop will stand trial in criminal court for failing to report suspected child sexual abuse. Bishop Robert Finn will be the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic official to be tried on such charges. The case stems from how the bishop handled the case of a priest now charged with possessing and producing pornographic photos of young girls, some of which were taken around churches and schools.
Many outraged Catholics in Kansas City are wondering how this could have happened. The church has argued — and, indeed, it does so in the just-released annual audit report — that the worst of its child sexual abuse problem is in the past. New allegations of abuse are made each year, but three-fourths of the credible new allegations made in 2011 were from adults reporting incidents long ago, from 1960 to 1984.
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