GENEVA
The Washington Times
By Meredith Somers-The Washington Times Tuesday, May 6, 2014
The Vatican on Tuesday for the first time detailed how it has handled more than 3,400 cases of sexual abuse reported since 2004, vowing to learn from its mistakes and potentially opening itself to more lawsuits by accepting that such abuse could fall under a U.N. treaty on torture.
The Holy See defrocked 848 priests and slapped 2,572 clergy members with lesser sanctions in the last decade, said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the U.N.
The revelation came during the second and last day of testimony from the Holy See before the U.N. Committee Against Torture in Geneva, Switzerland, where the Vatican is in the hot seat over how it handled the clergy sex abuse scandal and whether the abuse qualifies as torture.
“The criminalization of sexual abuse of children can be considered torture. This is what you have articulated,” Archbishop Tomasi told the committee. “I am not a lawyer, but I am to assume this application has to be related to the behavior of people in a measure … consistent with the convention.”
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.