UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Recent US criminal court revelations relating to child sexual abuse scandals in Illinois and Minneapolis, that both have US national political connections, suggest that US leaders, including House leaders, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama, may hardly be more forthcoming about “insider child sex abuse scandal” related matters than secretive Pope Francis and his Vatican “old boys’ club” have been about numerous cardinals.
Some of these recent revelations relate to two separate and significant new US criminal proceedings: (A) one involving abuse allegations and the former No. 3 US political leader, longtime Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, and (B) the other involving several priest child abuse cover up allegations and former longtime Minneapolis Catholic Church top official, Fr. Kevin McDonough, brother of Democratic President Barack Obama’s well regarded Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough.
The Minneapolis revelations, on top of the ongoing Cardinal George Pell revelations from Australia, raise serious questions about Pope Francis’ real agenda in holding bishops accountable. The pope’s US representative or nuncio reportedly has been directly involved in the Minneapolis Archdiocesan decision making. Indeed, as intrepid grandmother and advocate for children, Betty Clermont, has very pointedly reported recently, Pope Francis defiance in practice of the UN committee seeking to protect children from torture is extremely troubling and raises even more questions about the pope’s real agenda.
Fortunately for US children and their parents, these recent revelations are arising in independent and public US criminal judicial proceedings that promise full future disclosures, rather than secretive and captive Vatican proceedings ultimately controlled by the pope, like the current one for disgraced and admitted multiple child abuser, Polish Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski.
Disappointingly, the Vatican clique and the US political establishment appear to share elements of the same flawed approach to “insiders” who abuse children sexually or who protect child abusers — “DON’T ASK ! DON’T TELL !”. This approach will change soon, one way or another.
Reviewing some US politicians’ seeming silence about these scandals, brought to my mind the memory of my former Harvard Law mentor, Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who would likely have asked here, “What did they [politicians and bishops] know and when did they know it?”
A former Democratic Congressman, Rep. Melvin Watt, reportedly heard over 15 years ago an “unseemly rumor” about about Hastert’s sexual misconduct. Moreover, a sister of a second alleged Hastert sex abuse victim as a high school student, now deceased, credibly told ABC TV’s Brian Ross in this recent video how she tried futilely to get the media and others, including ABC TV, to listen in 2006 to her story about Hastert’s alleged abuse of her brother. That was around the time Hastert was being pressed for being so lax for so long on the Congressman Mark Foley scandal, which did political damage to the Republican Party in 2006.
Foley resigned amidst accusations of inappropriate sexual communications with young male House pages, that Boehner and Pelosi were both at some point aware of. Hastert unexpectedly resigned as well the following year.
Did John Boehner or Nancy Pelosi hear the rumor about Hastert? When? How about others from Illinois like President Obama, Michelle Obama, Valerie Jarrett and Hillary Clinton? If they knew of the rumor, why did they not speak up? Did protecting Hastert, and possibly others, have anything to do with the national political establishment’s surprisingly very muted reaction to the 2002 and subsequent Boston Globe’s bombshells on the priest sex abuse scandal.
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