FARMERS BRANCH (TX)
The Brookhaven Courier
April 8, 2019
In 2015, the movie “Spotlight” redirected media attention to the decades-long controversy of sexual abuse taking place in the Roman Catholic Church. Many abuse cases have surfaced over the past few decades, but did not get enough attention from the public to make news.
This is no longer a local or even a national issue. There have been reports of child sexual abuse in Catholic churches in many countries. Child abuse is a crime and should be dealt with in criminal justice systems.
Incidents of child sex abuse by Catholic priests around the world have forced the public to consider whether or not churches are a safe place for children.
In February, Cardinal George Pell, one of Pope Francis’ top advisers, was charged with child sex abuse in Australia for molesting two choirboys in the ’80s, according to USA Today. Pell faces up to a 50-year prison sentence. Pell’s charges came a few weeks after a summit in the Vatican at which Pope Francis called for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors.
The Vatican also announced Theodore McCarrick, former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, D.C., would be defrocked, or stripped of his priesthood, for sexual abuse of minors and adults, according to USA Today. McCarrick is unlikely to face criminal prosecution for the alleged abuse because it is beyond its statute of limitations, according to The New York Times.
These statutes of limitations are common across the U.S. and directly correlate with data on clergy abuse in any given state, Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of bishopaccountability.org, a site that tracks cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, said, according to The New York Times.
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