BERKSHIRE (MA)
Berkshire Eagle
March 3, 2019
By Ruth Bass
For too long, the world has either pretended that sexual assault wasn’t there or treated it as something that could be taken care of in a quiet corner and with no records kept. So, colleges — landlords to thousands of our vulnerable offspring — didn’t call the police when one of their citizens attacked another. They might have had a meeting of the student disciplinary committee, they might have told the parents, they might have conducted a meeting in a dean’s office. But as often as not, nothing much happened. The victim might still find him or herself in the library next to the person who had committed what would be a felony if it had happened on North Street. It was as if colleges were like Native American reservations with their own courts and laws.
Colleges do better, much better, on these things now, although Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is trying to make life easier for the attacker and thus much less easy for the victim. Today it’s a police matter when boy assaults girl (or girl assaults boy, in fact). It’s seen as a felony. But the Catholic Church has a long way to go when it comes to sexual assault. And the church is not dealing with college dorm, boy-girl assault. It’s faced with adult priests molesting children.
Still, despite the fact that the church’s ruler, Pope Francis, keeps waffling, things are happening. American bishops who did not move criminal priests around as if they were just pieces on a chess board have asked for more action. And most recently, in this state where The Boston Globe put its spotlight on the priest/boy scandal, several district attorneys have put their oar in.
In offices in Hampden, Berkshire, Franklin and Hampshire, the district attorneys announced that they would now be in the front line to help families affected by clerical sexual abuse. The DAs have started by setting up a telephone hotline that will allow victims of abuse to report directly to law enforcement, bypassing the need to complain to church officials or just suffer in silence. The hotline, the DAs said, would be staffed by state police detectives who are trained to deal with sexual abuse.
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