UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin
Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director
CONTACT: 414.429.7259
The United Nations leading voice on children’s rights has issued a stinging criticism of US law enforcement and US government agencies for their failure to investigate and prosecute clergy child sex offenders and bring church officials who have covered up these crimes to justice.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued their remarks in a report from Geneva saying they are “deeply concerned” about the lack of action by officials in the US concerning crimes that have taken place on a “massive and long-term scale.”
Although the Committee is concerned about crimes and cover ups taking place in other faith communities across the United States, it is the Catholic Church where the documentation and criminal evidence is overwhelming, incontrovertible and wide spread.
The Committee, of course, is right and the criticism is long overdue.
What other organization could withstand shattering headlines, year after year, in virtually every major prosecution district across the United States concerning the concealment and transfer of child sex offenders by its senior management, often crossing state and international boundaries, and it would result in no federal investigations, not a single hearing on Capitol Hill, and no denunciations from the White House? The United States, after all, even has an official ambassador to the Vatican and recognizes the Holy See as an actual government. What other foreign government has tens of thousands of institutions and employees in the United States and has been exposed for systematically concealing and harboring scores of individuals who have harmed American citizens, particularly our most vulnerable citizens, children, and has never faced prosecution, sanction, or investigation? Isn’t it time for the US ambassador to the Vatican to start advocating on behalf of American children?
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