UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
Posted by Cappy Larsen and Melanie Sakoda on July 10, 2012
Eleven days after his consecration as bishop, Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen was elected to lead the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). The gathered clergy and laity believed that this synodal “outsider” would lead their church, which had been plagued for years by financial scandals at the highest levels, into a better future.
We didn’t. We strongly suspected that Paffhausen would be just like his predecessors when it came to clergy sexual abuse. He talked tough. However, the archbishop failed to follow the words with actions.
Shortly following his election as primate, he told a reporter, “With a crime in the church, the church leader’s responsibility is that such a priest would be immediately removed from his role, and his case would be turned over to the civil authorities.”
Yet in one of the major sex abuse scandals of his tenure, Paffhausen failed to act when the OCA’s Canadian leader, Archbishop Seraphim Storheim, was accused of child sexual abuse. Storheim was finally suspended from the priesthood almost two years later, and only after the Canadian authorities arrested him.
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