Violation Of Faith: 1000 Children Molested By Catholic Priests In Pennsylvania, Report Reveals.

A recent U.S. grand jury report shows that at least 1000 of Pennsylvania’s children have been victims of sexual abuse inflicted by Catholic Church priests. The report found at least 300 priests guilty of molesting children, one of their main sources of information being the Catholic Church’s own records. The report is detailed and thorough, exposing priest profiles and the details of their crimes as told by the records, the victims, and priest confessions. 

The method the Church used to get away with such crimes for so long was the relocation of offending priests, disguising their departure from each place as “sick leave” or “nervous breakdown” in the records. Despite these labels, offending priests were still permitted to practice in other places. By the tone of the records, the Church inflicted no punishment for these sins, or recognized the problem in any way (such as by providing mental health support). Instead, the abusers were allowed to have access to more children in a new location where no one knew their crimes. This means that for every exposed abuse there was more than one person from the Church who knew, and a family being silenced. An example of this lack of responsibility can be seen in the Diocese of Allentown, where a priest was confronted by the family of one of his victims. By the end of it, the Church documents concluded “the experience will not necessarily be a horrendous trauma” to the sexually abused child, and that all the family would need was the opportunity to vent. Another documentation blames a 15-year-old for seducing a priest who already had allegations against him, leading to no consequences.

The Vatican released a statement following the report’s release, saying “The Holy Father understands well how much these crimes can shake the faith and the spirit of believers” and that “victims should know that the Pope is on their side.” This is not news to the Pope- abuses within the Catholic Church have been continuing for decades. According to NPR, cases started becoming known to the public before 1981, and were, therefore, happening long before this time and all over the world. In fact, according to Time “U.S. bishops have acknowledged that more than 17,000 people nationwide have reported being molested by priests and others in the church going back to 1950.”

However, as the report points out, the laws around reporting and convicting such abuses were in the Church’s favour and “[left its] victims with nothing.” These laws barely gave victims time to process what had happened to them before it was too late to prosecute. While some law improvements have been made, many of the cases outlined in the report are safe from prosecution due to such laws (or because the abusers have died). Therefore, the report calls for no time limit for victims to come forward about abuse, stricter laws that make it illegal for the Church to not report offences so they no longer solve them in-house, and banning non-disclosure agreements when dealing with criminal law. The law treats such abuse like something that will only affect victims for a short while after it has happened. We already know this is not the case, and that the short pleasure these men got from these children will scar them for a lifetime.  In the words of the report “we saw these victims; they are marked for life. Many of them wind up addicted, or impaired, or dead before their time.”

 The public response has been for more Grand Juries to conduct investigations on church abuses to catalyze these law changes. However, as the report points out, “grand jurors are just regular people who are randomly selected for service. We don’t get paid much.” One of the other large investigations into Priest pedophilia was done by a group of Journalists at the Boston Globe in 2002. We have had to rely on small independent groups to bring this huge issue to light and expose one of the most powerful institutions in the world. These groups have been exceptional in holding priests in their areas accountable, but it does raise the question, who actually has the power to investigate the Catholic Church in its entirety?

The first answer that springs to mind is the United Nations: our unifying go-to for all human rights breaches. The U.N. has in fact responded to the report by denouncing the Vatican and telling them to “immediately remove all known and suspected child sexual abusers” who have been reassigned. However, their next request is that the “expert commission” Pope Francis set up in 2017 will “investigate independently” all abuse cases. To clarify: they are asking the people who have covered up these abuses for decades to deliver the justice to the people they abused.  

Much of the global community are celebrating these findings on the assumption that the Church will finally be held accountable for their actions, when arguably the best candidate to implement such accountability has told the Church to solve it themselves.  This result could not be more disappointing for the victims and the grand jury who spent two years creating the report, especially since the U.N. called for the exact same thing in a 2014 report. Four years on, and the solution to this decades-old problem is the same, leaving little hope that much will change.

If there are regulations preventing the U.N. from launching an investigation themselves into Church abuses, Pennsylvania’s report proves they need to be removed.  If money is the problem, the Church can be taxed to fund government and/or U.N. inquiries.  Their charity status exempts many churches of differing religions from paying tax. As far as charity goes, justice for sexual abuse victims is a great cause to support, one that the Church should have no objections to, given their “shame and sorrow” that has followed the report’s release.  Agreeing to such terms may be a good way to restore people’s faith in the Catholic religion, because as the Vatican admits, it must be difficult for people to follow their teachings when the people preaching them have committed countless vile sins.  If it is not money or regulations preventing such action, we are left to assume the Church’s corruption has a grasp on the U.N. too.

No amount of compensation will reverse the harm that a predatory group of Catholic Priests have inflicted on thousands of children, it is only the least they can do. The Church not doing all that they can to ensure this happens not only shows an astonishing lack of empathy, but a clear indicator they have more to hide, and that this is still happening.

Catholics around the world have been led to believe that same-sex relations, premarital sex and abortion are wrong. People have been beaten, abused and oppressed over such beliefs that the Catholic Church stands so firmly behind. Yet, the men who vowed to stay pure for God in a life of abstinence were committing all of these “sins,” but to innocent minors without consequence.  With Pope Francis’ new-age reputation, maybe this chaste value can be reviewed to help correct the abusive culture within the church.

It seems dystopian that such crimes are allowed to happen. However, with the law on their side, a holy reputation, money and power, the Catholic Church is still getting away with it.  However, despite what the law says, it is not too late to bring legal justice to the victims. They have already been irreversibly failed, which will be emphasized if this new breakthrough is swept under the carpet until the next scandal surfaces, and the U.N. has to have another pointless stern word to the Vatican. If we cannot put our faith in the Church, the legal system or the U.N. to step up, and have to turn solely to the underdog heroes found in places like grand juries, news organizations and not-for-profits, it says some harrowing things about the world we live in.

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