ROME (ITALY)
CBC News
February 23, 2019
By Megan Williams
A dramatic feature of the sex abuse summit now underway at the Vatican has been the testimony of eight victims from around the world anonymously recounting their experience of abuse.
But the Vatican has no idea of if the victims’ abusers are still active as priests, a main organizer of the summit told CBC News.
Father Hans Zollner told CBC that none of the people who gave testimony at the four-day conference told the Vatican who their abusers were or where their cases had been dealt with.
When asked if the Vatican had looked into whether the priests accused by the victims are still in active ministry, Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and president of the Center for the Protection of Minors at the Pontifical Gregorian University, said: “No, they [the victims] have not disclosed it to me and my understanding is that maybe they don’t know [if the priests are still active in the Church]. But I can’t say because I don’t know it.”
Zollner said all but one of the victims the Vatican chose to provide testimony to a closed-door room of bishops wanted to protect their anonymity.
“They went to great effort not to reveal any detail,” Zollner said. “In some cases the family doesn’t know that they have been abused. In some places it would destroy the family. It would destroy their professional career and so forth.”
When CBC sent a text message later asking Zollner if he wanted to further comment on his statement that the Vatican had not verified the victims’ accounts since none had identified an abuser to the Vatican, he responded that was “not accurate.”
When asked to be more specific, his answers were vague.
He said the victims he was in contact with “did not disclose where their proceedings are,” adding that the victims were “verified by the people on the ground who had first contact with them.”
When asked what that meant, he did not respond.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.