TEXAS
Texas Standard
October 11, 2018
By Brooke Vincent & Rhonda Fanning
Church leaders say they will release names of those “credibly accused,” a term that has alarmed some survivors who want independent investigations.
People are calling for greater accountability from the Catholic Church following the reports of wide-ranging child sexual abuse by priests over several decades. In Texas, the church had originally admitted that 134 clergy members, out of 4,600 nationally were perpetrators of child sexual abuse, since the 1950s. But that’s about to change. Catholic leaders in Texas say they’ll soon release the names of all clergy who were “credibly accused” of child sexual assault.
Eileen Flynn DeLaO, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism, a former reporter and a member of the Religion Newswriters Association, says she was surprised by the news that Catholic leaders would reveal names, but she also says that it should have happened sooner.
“It’s long overdue. The bishops in Texas had the opportunity to publish more information about accused preists 14 years ago and they decided not to name names,” DeLaO says.
DeLaO says the church in Texas is taking this step so many years after initial allegations of clergy sex abuse because, in some ways, the public became complacent after the revelations from the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation into child sex abuse by priests in Boston in the early 2000s. She says people trusted that the church was taking steps to fix the problem – in some ways, that was true. DeLaO says the church had done a lot of training to prevent sexual abuse, but by 2018 the problem resurfaced.
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