UNITED STATES
Washington Examiner
By DAVID CLOHESSY • 9/21/15
It’s ironic that Pope Francis will soon speak to the United States Congress, because the U.S. is one of the western democracies that was most hard-hit by the priest sexual abuse crisis and also lacked any federal response to it whatsoever. No federal legislation or regulations or even resolutions were proposed or adopted. There were no congressional hearings. There was no Justice Department investigation. Nothing.
Abroad, a number of national and regional governments have conducted investigations and issued reports about this continuing crisis, including Ireland, Australia, Canada and Belgium.
Non-profits, like the Child Rights International Network and Amnesty International, have done investigations. International bodies, like the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee Against Torture, have done investigations,
But since the first U.S. pedophile priest made national headlines 30 years ago (Father Gilbert Gauthe of Lafayette, La.), the federal government has done virtually nothing. There have been two statewide investigations launched by attorneys general in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. There have been 8-10 local jurisdictions that have done grand jury probes. But there’s been no action by federal officials at all.
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