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	Vatican's New Sex Abuse Guidelines Don't Require Reporting By Richard Allen Greene and Hada Messia CNN May 16, 2011 http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/16/vatican-to-issue-new-sex-abuse-guidelines/ New Vatican guidelines aimed at fighting child abuse by priests tell Catholic bishops they should cooperate with police, but do not order them to report allegations to the authorities. "Sexual abuse of minors is not just a canonical delict but also a crime prosecuted by civil law," says the letter to bishops around the world, using the Vatican term for a violation of church law. Local laws on reporting suspected crimes to the authorities "should always be followed," the guidelines say. Advocates for victims said even before they were released that they would not solve the problem. "Bishops ignore and conceal child sex crimes because they can," said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). "So any 'reform' that doesn't diminish bishops' power and discretion is virtually meaningless." And the new Vatican statement will not require bishops to report suspected abusers to the police, he anticipated. "They aren't binding or mandatory, just suggestions," he said. "Such voluntary 'guidelines' have been widely ignored for years in the past. Top church staff have known of clergy sex crimes and cover ups for decades, if not centuries." Clohessy spoke to CNN before seeing the Vatican's statement. The Catholic Church has been reeling in the face of accusations of child abuse from across the United States and Europe, and stretching back decades. In the United States, eight Catholic dioceses and one Jesuit order have filed for bankruptcy protection in the face of lawsuits by victims, according to BishopAccountability, which tracks reports of abuse by priests. And a series of government-backed reports in deeply Catholic Ireland found a pattern of abuse and systematic cover-ups by church officials stretching back to the 1930s. The Vatican says only a tiny percentage of priests abuse children, and that it is taking steps to fight the problem, including defrocking priests or forcing them into positions where they do not have contact with the public. Pope Benedict XVI issued new rules last year aimed at stopping abuse. They included doubling the statute of limitations on the church's own prosecution of suspected molesters from 10 to 20 years, making it a church crime for a priest to download child pornography, and allowing the pope to defrock a priest without a formal Vatican trial. Monday's guidelines, known officially as a Circular Letter from the Vatican to Catholic bishops' conferences around the world, are a follow-up to last year's statement from the pope, "motu proprio Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela."
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