UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014
Statement by Peter Isely of Milwaukee, board member of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 414-429-7259, peterisely@yahoo.com )
It’s utterly tragic that a respected international panel of experts feels, in 2014, compelled to tell Catholic officials that they must “Immediately remove all known and suspected child sexual abusers from assignment and refer the matter to the relevant law enforcement authorities for investigation and prosecution.”
That is, of course, common sense and common decency. That the church hierarchy must be told this is damning.
It’s striking that the United Nations panel stresses that the Vatican’ wrongdoing is on-going. Some Catholic officials and their public relations teams try very hard to pretend that they’re “reforming.” This report shows that’s largely deception.
Here are five of the panels’ most important findings
1) The Vatican “still places children in many countries at high risk of sexual abuse, as dozens of child sexual offenders are reported to be still in contact with children.”
(This is, in our view, a dreadful understatement. Hundreds of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics still hold church jobs or are around kids. Only a tiny fraction of credibly accused and suspended child molesting priests, nuns, bishops, brothers and seminarians are monitored by church officials (and even then, not monitored well). An even smaller group are ever criminally prosecuted. So most sex offender clergy remain either on the job or unsupervised.)
2) The Vatican “has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests, as observed by several national commissions of inquiry.” and has “policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators.”
3) On “numerous occasions,” the Vatican “has refused to cooperate with law enforcement authorities and to disclose information requested by prosecutors and national commissions of inquiry”
4) The Vatican “has signed treaties with certain States, notably Italy, which guarantee areas of immunity from prosecution to Vatican officials, including for bishops and priests accused of offences.”
5) The Vatican should “promote the reform of statute of limitations in countries where they impede victims of child sexual abuse from seeking justice.” (In reality, time and time again, Catholic officials have fought hard against this simple reform.)
The panel flatly rejected Vatican officials’ claims that:
– it doesn’t control priests across the planet (“child sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic churches who operate under the authority of the Holy See, with clerics having been involved in the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children worldwide”.
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