UNITED STATES
RT
At a moment of turmoil for the Catholic Church following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, a UN committee is accusing American law enforcement of being soft on child sex abuse in religious groups – a problem infamously associated with the Church.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child stated in a February 2013 report that it was “deeply concerned” by systemic sexual abuse by higher-ups and staff of religious institutions. Most troubling was a “lack of measures taken by [American legal authorities] to properly investigate cases and prosecute those accused,” partially because of “a lack of measures … to properly investigate cases and prosecute them.”
The report, adopted in Geneva during a routine review of US compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child on February 1, urged American law enforcement officials to create such measures in order to get to work revealing cases of sexual abuse and taking predators to court.
Authorities from various religions have been accused and convicted of sexually abusing children, but none on the scale of the Catholic Church, which in the US alone has paid out some $2 billion in damages to victims of sexual abuse over the years.
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