NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press
September 20, 2018
By David Crary
Lawyers and advocates for victims of clergy sex-abuse are assailing as inadequate some new steps announced by U.S. Catholic bishops to curtail the abuse scandals that have deeply shaken the church this year.
The initiatives, announced Wednesday, include developing a code of conduct for bishops regarding sexual abuse and harassment, and establishing a confidential hotline — to be run by a third party — to receive complaints of sexual misconduct by bishops, and relay such complaints to appropriate church and civil authorities.
Critics called on the bishops to go further by allowing outside investigators full access to church sex-abuse records and by supporting changes to statute-of-limitation laws so that more cases of long-ago sex abuse could be addressed in court.
“Until they allow professional investigators inside the secret archives, there will be no real transparency,” said Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota lawyer who has handled many sex-abuse lawsuits. “They are incapable of handling this internally.”
Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has studied sex abuse statute of limitations, depicted the bishop’s statement as “little more than words … while they lobby against justice for the victims.”
Until the bishops support major statute of limitations reforms, she said Thursday, “they are enemies of the victims and the public seeking to know the actual risk posed by their policies.”
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