NEW YORK (NY)
Slate
February 19, 2019
By Molly Olmstead
A Washington Post investigation published Tuesday alleges that those at the highest ranks of the Vatican, including Pope Francis, were made aware of horrific abuse allegations in three Catholic schools for deaf children but did little to punish the accused or stop the abuse from continuing.
The allegations, the first set of which emerged in 2006, led to the 2016 arrest of an 83-year-old Italian priest named Nicola Corradi, who was thought to be the “ringleader” of the abuse, according to the Post. Charges are pending against 12 other suspects, and a 14th has already been sentenced to 10 years in prison for rape and sexual abuse.
The abuse reportedly began in the 1950s and lasted through the 1980s at the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf in Verona, Italy, and began in the 1980s in Argentina at Provolo schools in Lujan de Cuyo and in La Plata. Corradi taught for decades in each country.
The allegations are difficult to read, and they involve countless cases of abuse of children at least as young as 7. According to the Post:
Vulnerable to the extreme, the deaf students tended to come from poor families that fervently believed in the sanctity of the church. Prosecutors say the children were fondled, raped, sometimes tied up and, in one instance, forced to wear a diaper to hide the bleeding. All the while, their limited ability to communicate complicated their ability to tell others what was happening to them. Students at the school were smacked if they used sign language. One of the few hand gestures used by the priests, victims say, was an index [finger] to lips—a demand for silence.
But the church failed to punish the accused priests. The 2006 accusation by a man named Dario Laiti led more than a dozen other former students to come forward. The victims wrote to a local bishop in 2008 (it was at that point too late to press charges). In public statements, they named 24 priests and other faculty at the school as abusers. According to the group, dozens of others had been abused but were not willing to come forward. The bishop accused the victims of lying, and the victims sued for defamation, alerting the Vatican to the allegations.
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