16, August 2018
US clergy sex abuse revelation fuels push to reform sexual assault laws 0
The latest revelation of widespread child sexual abuse by US Catholic clergy has given impetus to efforts by legislators, including a Pennsylvania lawmaker who has said he was raped by a priest as a child, to make it easier to prosecute such cases.
Pennsylvania State Representative Mark Rozzi, 47, said he has fought for years to give people who say they were sexually assaulted as children more time to report such crimes to police in Pennsylvania, one of 14 US states considering bills to extend the statute of limitations for such offenses.
“We’re going to get what the victims want,” Rozzi said in a telephone interview on Wednesday, a day after a grand jury found that about 300 priests had sexually abused about 1,000 children over the past 70 years in Pennsylvania.
“You either support victims or you support pedophiles,” Rozzi said.
The grand jury report was the latest revelation in a scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church since the Boston Globe in 2002 reported that priests had preyed on young boys and girls and that church leaders had covered it up.
Similar reports have emerged in Europe, Australia and Chile, prompting lawsuits, sending dioceses into bankruptcy and undercutting the moral authority of the leadership of the Church, which has some 1.2 billion members around the world.
A statute of limitations is a law requiring that prosecutors bring a criminal case within a certain time frame. The advocacy group Child USA said such statutes can block justice as children may not realize they were victims of sex crimes for decades.
Amy Hill, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the bishops’ political arm in the state, declined on Wednesday to say whether bishops supported or opposed eliminating statutes of limitations.
“The time to discuss legislation will come later,” she said. “Our focus now is on improving ways that survivors and their families can recover.”
In the past, the group had spoken out against the idea. The national bishops’ conference did not respond to a request for comment.
Some 41 states have eliminated statutes of limitations for criminally prosecuting child sex abuse. Earlier this year, Michigan and Hawaii passed laws giving victims more time to report sexual assaults on children.
Pennsylvania was one of the first US states to raise the age for reporting child sexual abuse. In 2002 it lifted the age to 30 from 23 and five years later raised it to age 50.
State legislators are ready to take up Rozzi’s bill eliminating the limit, said Steve Miskin, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Representative Dave Reed. “It’s definitely something that he’s looking to bring up sooner than later,” Miskin said.
Tuesday’s report could help push through bills in states from California to New Hampshire that would relax the limits for criminal or civil action on sexual assaults on children, said Marci Hamilton, chief executive of the advocacy group Child USA.
Sexual abuse of children extends far beyond the Catholic Church, with teachers and sports coaches also facing accusations.
Given that child abusers in positions of power can continue to assault children for decades, making it easier to prosecute them could prevent future abuse if abusers are imprisoned or lose their positions, Hamilton said in a telephone interview.
“What we want to do is to find out who the hidden child predators are,” said Hamilton, who is also a professor of religion and law at the University of Pennsylvania.
Costs related to such cases have taken a heavy toll on church coffers, reaching nearly $600 million since July 2013, according to a May report by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
US church leaders have said that they have implemented extensive new measures to prevent the sexual abuse of children by clergy.
(Source: Reuters)
25, August 2018
Papal visit to Ireland dominated by calls for action on church abuse 0
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has used the first papal visit to Ireland in 39 years to demand action by the Roman Catholic Church to address the systemic cover-up of child abuse by persists and church institutions.
An Alitalia flight carrying Pope Francis, his entourage and the Vatican media corps touched down at Dublin airport on Saturday morning for a brief visit to Ireland, a country that has been devastated by clerical abuse.
“Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools, illegal adoptions and clerical child abuse are stains on our state, our society and also the Catholic Church. Wounds are still open and there is much to be done to bring about justice and truth and healing for victims and survivors,” Varadkar told a state reception attended by the Pope.
“Holy Father, I ask that you use your office and influence to ensure this is done here in Ireland and across the world … We must now ensure that from words flow actions.”
The Catholic Church faces its worst credibility crisis in years. Scandals in Ireland, Australia, Chile and the United States have put pressure on the Pope to more fully address the issue of child sex abuse.
‘Repugnant’ abuses a source of shame for church
Addressing the reception attended by some abuse survivors, Pope Francis acknowledged that the failure of Church authorities to address “repugnant” clerical abuses was a source of shame for the Catholic community.
“I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” he said.
“The failure of ecclesiastical authorities – bishops, religious superiors, priests and others – adequately to address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community.”
The number of people turning out for the Papal visit is expected to be about a quarter of the 2.7 million who greeted John Paul II in 1979, indicating how the country has changed since abuse cases came to light in the 1990s.
In 1979, contraception, homosexuality, divorce and abortion were illegal in Ireland, and more than nine in 10 people attended mass each week.
Those pillars of Catholic teaching have been overturned, with voters approving abortion and gay marriage in referendums over the past three years. Mass attendance is also now well below 10 percent in some Dublin parishes.
The papal visit coincides with the 2018 World Meeting of Families (WMOF) — a global Catholic gathering that takes place every three years.
Pope Francis is also set to attend an outdoor mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on Sunday.