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	Vatican Statement on Sexual Abuse by Irish Clergy Disappoints Victims Groups By Robert Mackey The New York Times February 16, 2010 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/vatican-statement-on-sexual-abuse-by-irish-clergy/ As my colleagues Elisabetta Povoledo and Alan Cowell report, after two days of closed-door meetings with Irish bishops, Pope Benedict XVI called the sexual abuse of children by Irish clergy members a “heinous crime,” in a statement released by the Vatican on Tuesday. The complete text of the Vatican statement is embedded below. Alison Healy of The Irish Times reports that victims of the abuse in Ireland said they were disappointed by the statement. Maeve Lewis, a psychotherapist who is the director of One in Four, a support group for abuse survivors in Ireland, told the Irish newspaper that she had hoped that the Vatican would address the role the Irish church played in covering up the crimes. Ms. Lewis added that her group was also disappointed that “the Vatican has accepted no responsibility for its role in facilitating the sexual abuse of children, referring only to the Irish church, and only vague declarations of intent for the future are included.” In an Irish radio interview on Tuesday Christine Buckley, an abuse survivor who runs a support center in Ireland, said she was “dismayed” by the outcome of the meeting, which appeared to her to have been “a charade.” As The Lede reported last year, an Irish commission of inquiry published a 2,600-page report in May detailing the abuse suffered by some of the children. On Monday night this Al Jazeera report from Dublin showed some of the victims of the abuse saying that it continues to haunt them and disrupt their lives.
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