UNITED STATES
The Catholic World Report
Media reports often presume accused priests are guilty until proven innocent, doing irreparable damage to the lives of the wrongly accused.
David F. Pierre, Jr.
When a Catholic priest is publicly accused of the crime of abuse, it is typical for the media to trumpet the name of the cleric, while allowing the accuser to remain completely anonymous throughout the ordeal.
Although this situation is not unique to Catholic priests, it is a practice that clergy have frequently griped about in private, and it is an issue that has received almost no public attention.
For example, last August in Hawaii, a criminal jury took just minutes to acquit Father Bohdan Borowec, a Ukrainian Catholic priest on vacation from Canada, of charges of kidnapping and sexual assault stemming from an incident alleged to have occurred months earlier. Father Borowec had never had any other accusations of wrongdoing against him in decades in ministry.
Throughout the process, Father Borowec had his name and picture plastered across media reports as a “priest charged with rape.” Yet never did the media publish the woman accuser’s name.
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