PENNSYLVANIA
The Daily Times
Adults who were sexually abused by priests when they were children have maintained in civil lawsuits and through support groups that officials in the Roman Catholic Church are, in essence, conspirators in the crimes because they covered them up. More to the point, church officials have long handled abuse complaints internally.
In the past, they apparently transferred priests out of the parishes where they were accused of abuse to another assignment where they often would still have access to children. Sometimes they sent them to the church’s own treatment facilities with the false hope that these pedophiles would be cured.
What church officials apparently did not do, is tell parishioners why their priests were being transferred nor did they report the accused abusers to law enforcement authorities.
The futility of this approach was painfully illustrated recently when a Philadelphia newspaper reported that, in the early 1980s, a priest claims he was instructed by officials in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to remain silent when he informed them that another clergyman was molesting boys in Northeast Philadelphia. They said they would take care of it.