The flip side is called ‘Enabling’.

Key ingredients (along with authoritarianism) of a sick, dysfunctional, clerical church culture.

But the concept of Fraternal Correction, I’m afraid, drove away in the days of the Nash Rambler, and hasn’t been seen since.

In a March 9, 2010 press release “concerning cases of the sexual abuse of minors in ecclesiastical institutions,” Fr. Federico Lombardi SJ parrots out the Holy See’s predictable responses to the church’s ever widening problem of sexual abuse, particularly that of minor children.

http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/dinamiche/a0_en.htm

The institutional Roman Catholic church has reacted to the continuing sexual abuse debacle neither rapidly nor decisively, contrary to what Lombardi states. The Vatican has attempted to distance itself from what has happened in country after country, first categorizing it as an “American problem,” then as a “homosexual problem.” Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law even went so far as to blame the Boston Globe, publicly calling down the wrath of God on the newspaper.

What was done by church leadership in the United States, for example, it was forced to do by the pressure of public opinion after records, files and correspondence were forced into the public venue in 2002 by Judge Constance M. Sweeney, a very brave, grounded and principled Catholic woman in Boston, Massachusetts.

The church’s response continues to be re-active rather than pro-active while minimizing the systemic and endemic abuse of power and authority which has enabled and exacerbated it on the one hand while covering it up whenever and wherever possible on the other.

The “wide-ranging context” is that in countries from the United States, Canada, Australia and Ireland to Austria, the Netherlands and Germany church authorities have repeatedly and consistently disregarded its own moral and Canon laws as well as the existing laws of the countries’ in which these horrific crimes against humanity occurred.

Lombardi does not mention nor does he admit to the well documented widespread cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by bishops and other church officials in many countries like the United States, that makes the church’s sexual abuse problems particularly egregious. If church authorities had done the morally right thing initially how many children would have escaped being sexually abused by a particular priest?

When are people of good will going to say, enough!

When are state legislators going to change the laws so that justice can be pursued for the thousands upon thousands of victims of childhood sexual abuse who have been unable to access let alone obtain justice?

In most states and probably in most countries existing criminal as well as civil laws give more protection to sexual predators and their enablers then they do to victims of childhood sexual abuse – by anyone. This is deplorable and should not be.

The removal of all statutes of limitation in regard to the sexual abuse of children is the single, most effective way to hold predators and enabling institutions accountable before the law.

The state of Delaware in the United States is one of a very few states in the U.S. which has removed all criminal and civil statutes of limitation in regard to the sexual abuse of children – by anyone. It also legislated a two year civil window for previously time barred cases, again, by anyone. That window closed in July of 2009.

In a civil suit, unlike a criminal suit, the burden of proof that any sexual abuse took place is on the plaintiff. The burden is not on the accused individual or institution to prove innocence, at least not in the United States.

Every victim of childhood sexual abuse should have a right to the pursuit of justice at the very least!

If Delaware can do it other states and other countries should be able to do it and hold sexual predators and any enabling institutions responsible, especially those institutions which chose to ignore their own internal laws.

I was privileged to testify before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees in support of the 2007 Child Victims Law in Delaware.

No rules and no laws of any religious organization or denomination should be allowed to trump the laws of a civilized society where the protection of children is concerned.

The Roman Catholic Church should be held to the highest standard as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a Convention that by any objective standard it has grossly violated for decades.

Isn’t it time to formalize those violations as the crimes against humanity they truly are?

Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims’ Advocate
New Castle, Delaware, USA
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com

Church Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope

BERLIN — A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop. . . .