MALTA
Times of Malta
February 15, 2021
The Church has always been a key focal point in Maltese life and culture. Precisely because of its importance and dominance, and not just in Malta, the issue of clerical sex abuse has only begun to fully surface in recent decades. Evidence from countries which have had extensive experience of clerical abuse suggests that it is far more widespread than formal reporting would suggest.
Experience to date indicates that victims are extremely slow to come forward while Church and state are notoriously slow to acknowledge the issue and society at large is significantly reluctant to even discuss it. Most of us find the horrors of sexual abuse and its consequences just too painful to contemplate and, as a result, much clerical sex misconduct and abuse is kept silent.
Church power and society’s loyalty and protectiveness towards the Church has inhibited effective reporting, investigation and sanctioning of abusers with often devastating consequences.
The obsession of Church authorities with protecting image, status and power, often at the expense of victims, has compounded the problem further. At a deeper level, sexual abuse within the Church references the fact that such abuse is far more common in society than we like to imagine.
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