UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Joshua J. McElwee | Jun. 18, 2013
For eight decades, leaders of a community of Catholic priests and brothers spanning 10 U.S. states acted inadequately in responding to sex abuse allegations and prioritized protecting accused abusers over their victims, concludes an audit released by the group Tuesday.
The report, released by a province of Franciscan priests known as Capuchins, could raise questions of how communities of religious, which are not under direct control of bishops, are handling abuse allegations.
It also addresses themes many critics of the U.S. church’s response to sex abuse have raised since the issue made national headlines in 2002.
The report says that at the heart of the Capuchins’ inadequacy to respond to the abuse was a culture of clericalism that placed the needs of priest-abusers above their lay victims and deference to lawyers who “revictimized” those victims in an attempt to protect the clerics from costly lawsuits.
“It is the opinion of the auditors that the Capuchins’ response to sexual abuse reports was deficient, especially their failures to report abuse to civil authorities and their inadequate pastoral responses to victims,” states the report, which was conducted by the Capuchins’ St. Joseph Province by three auditors over the last year and which examined province records back to 1932.
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