DENVER (CO)
Crux
Nov. 22, 2019
By Charles Collins
A children’s rights group is warning that a “Third Wave” of clerical sex abuse scandals is hitting Latin America, with revelations showing how the Catholic Church has continued to try and hide the extent of the crisis.
The London-based Child Rights International Network (CRIN) released The Third Wave: Justice for survivors of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Latin America on Nov. 20. It looks at the scale of abuse and cover-up by the Church in every Latin American country, as well as reviewing whether national laws on child sex crimes adequately protect children.
CRIN says the first wave of abuse scandals took place in Ireland and North America, with the second taking place in Oceania and continental Europe.
“There is a growing global wave of demands for accountability of the Catholic Church for the sexual abuse of children, especially now in more Catholic majority countries,” said Leo Ratledge, CRIN’s legal and policy director.
The report says the Catholic Church in Latin America has systematically tried to suppress abuse complaints and scandals in a number of ways that will seem familiar to many U.S. Catholics who lived through the clerical abuse crisis of the past 20 years.
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