UNITED STATES
GlobalPost
Agence France-Presse February 5, 2014
An advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests called Wednesday for legal action after a devastating UN report denounced the Vatican for failing to stamp out the scourge.
The UN report “is a wake-up call, not to Catholic officials — who’ve known about and concealed abuse for decades and still do — but for secular officials, especially those in law enforcement,” the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement.
Law enforcers “can and should investigate Catholic abuses and coverups and prosecute the church supervisors who are still protecting predators and endangering children,” it said the statement by SNAP president Barbara Blaine.
“For the safety of children, we hope every head of state on the planet reads this and acts on it,” she added.
The reaction came after the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said “tens of thousands of children worldwide” had been abused systemically for years within the Catholic Church.
It called on the Church to remove all clergy suspected of raping or molesting children.
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