PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Inquirer
September 18, 2018
By Arthur McCaffrey
http://www2.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/catholic-sex-abuse-grand-jury-report-pennsylvania-federal-inquiry-20180918.html
Earlier this month, the New York attorney general initiated a criminal inquiry into clergy abuse of children in all the Catholic dioceses in New York state. This came fast on the heels of Pennsylvania’s statewide grand jury investigation of Catholic clergy abuse, which was reported out by Attorney General Josh Shapiro on Aug. 14, exposing at least 1,000 cases of child abuse over a 70-year period.
New Jersey, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Missouri have similar criminal investigations underway. This follows previous inquiries in other states.
If you want to go back to ground zero, in Boston in 2002, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly may have issued the very first statewide report on July 23, 2003, when his 16-month investigation revealed that probably more than 1,000 children had been sexually abused by priests and other church workers in the Archdiocese of Boston since 1940 — which averaged out to about 16 children per year up to 2003. By that time, Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law, who presided over decades-long cover-ups of abuse, had fled to Rome, leaving before he could be subpoenaed.
But no matter how many separate state inquiries are initiated, I predict that the findings will all repeat the vocabulary of “cover-up,” “collusion,” “enabling,” “sacrificing children for the sake of the institution’s reputation” — the same script gets replayed over and over. The time is long past for the criminality of the Roman Catholic Church to be treated as just a local or state problem — this is a national problem that is part of the global epidemic of child abuse.
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