BOSTON (MA)
Crux
By Abuse survivors and their supporters
Special to Crux February 3, 2016
Over the past 14 years, thousands of survivors of sexual abuse by priests and their supporters have maintained a vigil every Sunday at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in downtown Boston. We have protested lies, broken promises, and survivor re-victimization by the Catholic Church and its hierarchy; we have supported men and women survivors in dealing with the horrors of abuse; we have demanded change in a Church that for too long denied and facilitated and covered up the rape of children.
Yet some parishioners still ask: “Why are you demonstrating? What do you want?”
In January 2002, the Globe Spotlight team published the story of how Cardinal Bernard F. Law, Bishop John McCormack, and others in Boston had transferred priests who had sexually abused children from parish to parish, where they continued to abuse even more young people. The reporters’ skill and courage in exposing the crimes that one of the most powerful institutions in Boston had committed is dramatically presented in the movie “Spotlight,” which is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture this year. Everyone should see it.
But the movie stops with the initial revelation in 2002.
The survivors and their supporters who have stood outside the Cathedral every Sunday for 14 years since then are committed to keeping the issue of sexual abuse of children by priests alive. By their presence, they validated the truth of what survivors were saying and made a commitment that survivors would never be alone again. What this meant to survivors needs to be heard.
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