More people allege childhood incidents after YouTube video causes outcry, raising prospect of a public reckoning like Ireland’s
The Catholic Church in Poland has seen an uptick in accusations from people claiming to have been sexually abused by clergy as children, after a YouTube video sparked public anger at an institution that is at the political and social heart of this culturally conservative country.
The increase appears to have been prompted by the two-hour-long YouTube documentary about sexual-abuse allegations against Polish clergy, entitled “Tell No One,” which has been viewed more than 22 million times. Victims’ advocates say the film has shifted the mood in a country that, they argue, has been slow to address allegations of clerical sex abuse.
Since then, at least 21 people have stepped forward with new allegations, according to local church officials contacted at 24 of Poland’s 41 dioceses. Officials at the remaining dioceses didn’t return calls or emails, or declined to discuss the subject.
A local victim’s support group, Don’t be Afraid, said it had received over 100 emails detailing such accusations since “Tell No One” went online, though the group hasn’t yet determined how many of them were previously unknown.
On Wednesday, a statue of a priest—accused in the documentary of sex abuse—had been removed from the grounds of a basilica in central Poland.
“What we can certainly say is that we are dealing here with an increased number of people reporting cases of sexual abuse,” said Przemysław Śliwiński, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Warsaw, which declined to put a number on the new cases. Another church spokesman said each diocese responsible for one of the clergy named in the film has appointed a delegate to review the film and see if there should be a formal investigation.
The public outcry has raised the possibility that Poland could follow the path of Ireland, where revelations of widespread sexual and physical abuse by priests and church employees has shaken society over the past two decades.
It also speaks to the power of nontraditional media, say advocates for abuse victims, who have for years pressed accusations through courts or mainstream news outlets with limited resonance.
In a 1997 newspaper interview, Karol Chum, a 45-year-old software engineer, first accused Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz, a much-loved figure who helped lead Poland’s anti-Communist movement, of having abused him as a child. The accusation drew no response from civil or church authorities at the time.
But when Mr. Chum repeated it on Facebook last month, it drew thousands of likes and shares and widespread media coverage. The Archdiocese of Wroclaw, in western Poland, said it launched an investigation within 24 hours of the post.
“Although it is difficult to consider a meme as a way to report a crime, we decided to treat it as a filed complaint,” an archdiocese spokesman said, referring to the Facebook posting.
Church representatives declined to make Cardinal Gulbinowicz, now in his 90s, available for interview or comment, citing his ill health and advanced age. The Polish episcopate declined to comment on the accusation.
The surge in cases will be a test of the resolve of the Vatican and the church’s Polish hierarchy to tackle sex-abuse allegations, which were the subject of a major Vatican summit in February. Under new rules that took effect June 1, Catholic clergy must expedite investigations of bishops accused of child sex abuse or covering up such crimes by their priests. The “Tell No One” documentary includes several victims who allege that the priests who abused them enjoyed protection from local bishops.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna, a senior official at the Vatican body that hears sex abuse cases, will speak with Polish bishops and other church officials about clerical abuse later this week during a visit to the country.
Church leaders in Poland have declined to follow the “zero tolerance” policy that was adopted in the U.S. in the 2000s, under which any priest found to have sexually abused a person under the age of 18 is permanently removed from the ministry. Church leaders in only a handful of countries have emulated the U.S.’s zero-tolerance policies.
As of February, at least nine priests convicted in court of child sex-abuse crimes continued to celebrate Mass publicly as priests in Poland.
The Polish episcopate said in an emailed response to questions that its bishops apologize to everyone affected by such abuse. “The Bishops warned against transferring the guilt of particular clerics to all priests,” the episcopate wrote.
Church leaders have taken some steps to counter abuse—for example, increasing the age of consent from 15 to 18 under church law. Later this month, Polish bishops are set to meet to discuss whether and how to tighten rules on how sex-abuse allegations are handled.
In a poll last month by Kantar, an international opinion-research firm, 60% of Polish respondents said the entire church was responsible for the sex-abuse scandals, not just individuals. In another survey this month, by Institute Pollster, 86% of Polish respondents considered pedophilia a real problem in the church. In that poll, only a third said they trusted the institution, and 57% said the YouTube documentary had negatively affected their opinion.
Previous polls seeking Poland’s general opinion of the church were considerably more positive toward it.
“So far, the dynamic was, we had scandals, news reports, and then slowly but surely this was fading away,” said Elżbieta Korolczuk, a Polish sociologist and prominent commentator on sexual-abuse issues. “Whereas today it seems we have this kind of synergy.…This kind of anger, disillusionment with the church as a structure is seeping in.”
The issue is posing a political riddle for Poland’s conservative, ruling Law and Justice party, which blends cultural conservatism and defense of the church with nationalism and cautious skepticism toward the European Union. Following the outcry, the government has stiffened penalties for child sexual abuse.
“We are strongly against this narrative that sexual crimes committed by men in frocks are somehow different, or worse than those committed by other pedophiles,” said Marcin Horala, a Law and Justice lawmaker. “We want to prosecute all pedophiles.”
Natalia Ojewska in Warsaw and Francis X. Rocca in Rome contributed to this article.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
A man has accused Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz of abusing him as a child. An earlier version of this article misspelled the cardinal’s first name as Hernyk in the article and a photo caption. (June 12, 2019)
Appeared in the June 13, 2019, print edition as ‘Poland’s Catholic Clergy Pressured on Abuse’.
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