LINCOLN (RI)
Valley Breeze News
July 9, 2019
By Arlene Violet
Despite being prepared for the release of the list of clergy members who had been “credibly accused “of sexually abusing children I still felt sick reading about it. After all, as attorney general in 1985-86 I prosecuted four of those priests and indicted another who ultimately made the Hall of Shame list on perjury charges. Rhode Island was only the second jurisdiction in the United States to prosecute child sex abuse cases where the perpetrator was a priest.
It is difficult to remember that time of innocence when people were actually shocked by such a revelation. Now it is commonplace. Good priests have been victimized by their confreres. Virtually everyone today in a Roman collar is viewed with skepticism.
As bad as the transfer of “guilt by association” is from the guilty priests, the Catholic Church has shot itself in the foot and other parts of its body politic over and over. One of the priests in a rectory who reported the criminal activity of a clergyman was treated as a pariah with then-Bishop Louis Gelineau transferring him out of the Diocese because he was also a priest who belonged to a religious order. The message was loud and clear to other priests namely: shut up or lose your ministry. It was only when the provincial of the religious order agreed to send the reporting priest back to testify that the perpetrator professed guilt pre-trial. Yet, the damage was done since some priests mummed up when they should have had the courage to come forward.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.