ANAHEIM (CA)
Crux
March 25, 2019
By Elise Harris
Bishop Kay Schmalhausen of Ayaviri, Peru believes current punishments for both the crime of clerical sexual abuse (usually expulsion from the clerical state) and the cover-up are ineffective, and suggested harsher penalties including excommunication.
As a former member of a group whose founder has been charged with abuses of conscience, power and sexuality, Schmalhausen told Crux that some key questions need to be asked.
“What has been done so far with the perpetrators of such crimes? How is the damage to the victims, along with the scandal caused to the faithful of the Church and in the eyes of the world, being repaired? Is there even a minimum of proportionality and justice in the measures implemented so far?” he asked.
“Clearly the answer today seems to be no. The result is the indignation of many Catholics and non-Catholics,” he said, adding that the Church needs to admit “that faced with these new problems uncovered inside the Church, our criminal law was not, nor is it currently, ready to act.”
Ordained a priest with the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) in 1989, Schmalhausen was appointed bishop of Ayaviri in 2006. In 2015, abuses perpetrated by the SCV’s founder and other high-ranking members, including the sexual abuse of several minors, were made public with the publication of the bombshell book, Half Monks, Half Soldiers, by journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz.
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