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	John Fidler: Are Children Still at Risk of Abuse from Catholic Priests? Reading Eagle June 19, 2009 http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=143948 They are more than naked, the girls lined up side by side while nuns taunt them about the most intimate parts of their bodies. Charity and mercy are missing in this asylum for girls caught kissing boys, for being raped or in some cases, for simply being too pretty. While the nuns throw their taunts like so many darts, some of the girls cry; some stare through their tormentors, numb to the mistreatment. In Peter Mullan's shattering film from 2002, "The Magdalene Sisters," scene follows scene in which the nuns humiliate, abuse and otherwise deny the humanity of a sampling of the 30,000 girls believed to have been persecuted in these Irish asylums over a century. The last Magdalene Asylum closed in 1996. These images of hopelessness emerged yet again as I read the recent report by an Irish commission on the sexual and physical abuse of tens of thousands of children in church-run residential schools over 60 years. The report comes five years after a similar report of sexual abuse of children by priests in this country by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Both reports rely on testimony by the children themselves, some of whom have kept their secrets for decades. But the questions that linger are these: Are children still being abused by priests today, and will we see another wave of disclosures a generation from now? Answers are not easy to come by. Jay Abramowitch is an attorney in Wyomissing who has, with fellow attorney at Leisawitz Heller, Ken Millman, represented 150 people who say they were abused by priests. "I have no doubt," Abramowitch told me. "Children are still at risk." He said that the cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church persists. As for abusive priests, Abramowitch said, "They can't help themselves." I also spoke with Juliann Bortz, director of the Allentown chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. I asked her if we know the abuse has ended. "We don't," she said. "There are still a lot of people who don't believe it (the abuse) happened." I was surprised to learn that, apparently, no parents or parent groups have insisted that they monitor their children while they were in the company of priests. Bortz and Abramowitch knew of none; neither did Matthew Kerr, a spokesman for the Allentown Diocese. Has faith upended belief? Is Abramowitch right? I again draw on Garry Wills, emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University (and a Catholic) and his excellent book, "Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit," to learn whether the abuse of children by Catholic priests is ongoing. "Looking the other way is a deeply ingrained habit and necessity, a tactic of survival, for men whose lives are honeycombed with furtive acts," he writes. "It would be dangerous - in terms of scandal and lay disappointment, for those being observant themselves - to let light flood the shadowy underworld of secrecy and evasion and misrepresentation that is the priestly way of life." The John Jay College report on abuse of children by priests in this country and the more recent government commission's report of similar horrors in Ireland shone a light briefly into that underworld. As for my central question, Elie Wiesel might have the best answer. At an appearance with President Barack Obama at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where his father died at the hands of the Nazis, Wiesel tried to answer a question his father might pose: "What has the world learned?" "I am not so sure," Wiesel said, his words barely audible. Wiesel has tirelessly reminded a world that we must not forget. But who will urge us not to forget the eager and impressionable children beset by graceless priests who have abandoned their most basic charge, that of charity and mercy? John Fidler is a copy editor and writer at the Reading Eagle. He holds a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. Contact him at 610-371-5054 or jfidler@readingeagle.com
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