VATICAN CITY
Catholic Register
BY JOSEPHINE MCKENNA, RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
May 5, 2014
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican could face a wave of new sexual abuse claims dating back decades if a United Nations inquiry finds that the Roman Catholic Church has violated an international treaty against torture and inhuman treatment.
The Centre for Constitutional Rights, on behalf of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said May 5 that victims may look at fresh litigation since torture was not bound by the statute of limitations in many of the 155 countries that have endorsed or ratified the UN Convention against Torture, including the United States.
“For too long, sexual violence and acts of rape by the Catholic Church have been minimized,” said Katherine Gallagher, senior staff attorney at the New York-based CCR, after the UN panel that enforces the torture convention held hearings in Geneva.
“To recognize these acts of torture could assist greatly in the statute of limitations problems that some people have faced. In the U.S., you don’t have a statute of limitations on torture.”
Earlier, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s ambassador to UN agencies in Geneva, sought to limit the Holy See’s legal responsibility for the clerical sex abuse scandal, just three months after the Vatican was severely criticized by another UN panel for failing to protect children at risk.
The Vatican ratified the UN Convention against Torture in 2002.
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