UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Joshua J. McElwee | Jun. 18, 2013
Two former leaders of the lay group set up by the U.S. bishops in 2002 to monitor the church’s sex abuse policies nationwide have said questions remain over how religious orders are being audited for their adherence to those policies.
The comments of the leaders came in interviews with NCR Monday before the release of a wide-ranging audit Tuesday, which concluded that the province of one order acted inadequately in responding to sex abuse allegations over a period of eight decades.
That province, the report concluded, placed the needs of priest-abusers above their lay victims and gave deference to lawyers who “re-victimized” those victims in an attempt to protect the clerics from costly lawsuits.
One of the former leaders of the U.S. bishops’ lay group to monitor sex abuse policies, Judge Michael Merz, said religious orders are not bound by the same rules for abuse reporting as bishops across the country.
While 194 of 195 of U.S. dioceses have agreed to abide by the policies set in place by the bishops in 2002, known as “The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” orders of religious are not bound by that charter, said Merz, a federal district court judge in Ohio who served as the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board for clergy sex abuse from 2007 to 2009.
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