TOLEDO (OH)
The Blade
Editorial
A United Nations investigation of the Roman Catholic Church’s clergy sex-abuse scandal should prompt the Vatican to be more transparent and Pope Francis to crack down harder on the abusers’ enablers.
Barbara Blaine, a founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), was abused by a priest in Toledo when she was a little girl. Last week in Geneva, she watched an international human rights panel grill Vatican representatives about the church’s lukewarm response to the child sex-abuse scandal.
Ms. Blaine and other SNAP members argue that the Vatican is not honoring its agreement to abide by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The U.N. committee demanded that the Vatican open its files on sex-abuse cases — which it has not done — and improve the transparency of how it handles such cases.
The U.N. panel and other independent, secular bodies must investigate, publicize, and prosecute not only the abusers, but also those who shielded them. The Ohio General Assembly needs to revisit a law it passed in 2006 that failed to extend a statute of limitations for abuse cases, so that cases that came to light years after the fact can still be prosecuted.
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