UNITED STATES
GlobalPost
Jason Berry
December 10, 2013
News that the Vatican will create a commission to address its global sex abuse crisis comes 11 years after American bishops, amid devastating media coverage from the Boston scandal, met for their summer conference in Dallas, trailed by 700 journalists.
With help from RF Binder, a Madison Avenue public relations firm specializing in damage control, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops by parliamentary vote enacted a youth protection charter, predicated on “zero tolerance.”
They also announced the formation of a National Review Board of 12 blue-ribbon Catholics to research the crisis and offer an agenda for resolution.
Washington, DC attorney Robert Bennett became the Review Board chair. Among other members: Leon Panetta, the former chief of staff to President Clinton; Pamela Hayes, a New York defense attorney and former prosecutor; and Judge Anne Burke, now on the Illinois Supreme Court.
The Review Board spent 18 months interviewing bishops, therapists, theologians, victim advocates, clinicians working with perpetrators and journalists including myself for the final report.
The report called for transparency and oversight of bishops to halt the practice of concealing and recycling sex offenders.
But as Justice Burke told GlobalPost, “The bishops did not follow our recommendations. They set up barriers for our work from the very beginning.”
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