Advocacy Groups Seek Hearings on Abuse Scandal Want Statute of Limitations in Cases Lifted, by Matt Byrne, Boston Globe, March 14, 2010

Advocacy Groups Seek Hearings on Abuse Scandal
Want Statute of Limitations in Cases Lifted

By Matt Byrne
Boston Globe
March 14, 2010

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/14/advocacy_groups_seek_hearings_on_abuse_scandal/

BOSTON (MA) -- As European governments have begun inquiries into the most recent allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members in several countries, two Boston groups called for similar hearings in the United States at a demonstration yesterday outside US Senator Scott Brown's Boston office.

More than two dozen supporters of two advocacy groups turned up outside the John F. Kennedy Federal Building at Government Center, braving wind and rain to call for congressional hearings on what the groups say is a growing scandal of worldwide sexual abuse.

Demonstrators protested against abuse by clergy members yesterday outside the John F. Kennedy Federal Building.
Photo by Wendy Maeda

"We now know the Vatican operates the oldest and largest pedophile ring, and it goes to the very top," said Robert Costello, 48, the coordinator of the New England chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Costello coordinated the demonstration to coincide with rallies in 30 other cities around the nation this weekend, according to the website of the victims' group. "We planned this for solidarity with the Irish," he said, saying the scandal has so far touched dioceses in 19 countries.

"The silence here, where the scandal originated, has been deafening," said Anne B. Doyle, cofounder of BishopAccountability.org, a group that documents cases of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. "We need to pressure our elected officials to investigate our church, because the church will not clean itself up."

In a letter to Brown, BishopAccountability and the survivors' network call for the recently elected senator to continue his efforts to change the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases. As a state senator, Brown cosponsored legislation on Beacon Hill to repeal the limits. Separate elements of those bills have since become law, according to Brown's website.

Current state regulation, amended in September 2006 and signed into law by then-Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healy, allows legal action until the victim is 43 years old. Previously, prosecutors could not pursue cases after the victim turned 31. Members of both groups are calling for the limits to be repealed, potentially allowing prosecutors to pursue any case regardless of its age.

Brown will be reviewing the issue, said the senator's spokesman Felix Browne, who pointed to the lawmaker's record on sexual abuse reform. Brown spearheaded the effort to pass Massachusetts's Jessica's Law, named for Jessica Lunsford, who was abducted, raped, and murdered in Florida in 2005. A convicted sex offender later admitted to having committed the crime. The law led to the refinement of statutory rape charges, and imposed a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for convictions in certain instances, one of which is when the rapist is a member of the clergy.

Spurred by a recent development in Germany that has drawn questions about Pope Benedict XVI's then-stewardship of the archdiocese in which a German priest had molested boys, the Boston groups called for Brown to help propose hearings in Washington into cases of abuse in the United States.

The Vatican has said the pope was not involved in the decision to allow the priest to return to pastoral work.

"They knew, they know now, and they still let it continue," Costello said, referring to the church. "This is not a problem of celibacy. The problem is of criminal, predatory, brutal sex crimes against children."