UNITED STATES
BIshopAccountability.org
The burden of disclosing sexual abuse by Catholic clerics and its cover-up by religious leaders has fallen almost completely on victims. Most church insiders who have witnessed misconduct have chosen not to report it. However, there have been remarkable exceptions. BishopAccountability.org is building a database of whistleblowers – priests, women religious, and other church employees who reported colleagues to church or civil authorities and fought their superiors’ concealment of abuse. By documenting this overlooked aspect of the crisis, we hope to raise awareness that whistleblowers must be protected in both the church and civil society, and help witnesses who have stayed silent to find the courage to come forward.
Unlike priests and nuns who have taken bold stands on either traditional or liberal issues, those who expose their colleagues’ sexual assaults or their superiors’ dishonesty have no lay constituencies to support them. Many of the individuals profiled below have experienced retaliation and grief in some form – defamation, job loss, career derailment, ostracization, pressure by superiors to admit to mental illness, and in at least one case, suicide.
We will be adding steadily to this list, as well as to our preliminary international list. Later this year, we also will post a list of lay whistleblowers. To suggest names in any of these categories, please email us.
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