SNAP Snaps Back at the Catholic Church, News Review, September 15, 2011

SNAP Snaps Back at the Catholic Church

News Review
September 15, 2011

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/hotflash/blogs#BlogPost-3705702

This afternoon, two members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, stood outside the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in downtown Sacramento to call attention to a recent complaint against the Roman Catholic Church filed at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

The complaint, filed by SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights, accuses the Catholic leadership—specifically, bishops, cardinals and Pope Benedict XVI—with crimes against humanity for their conduct in the cases of children abused by priests.

A Vatican spokesman yesterday called the complaint “ludicrous."

"They’ll say that they have policies in place, and they’ve changed, and they’re moving forward,” said Tim Lennon, a member of SNAP from San Francisco.

But this isn’t just a case of an abusing priest here and another somewhere else, according to Lennon. At issue is a pattern of behavior on the part of church officials in almost all cases of sexual abuse by priests in a number of nations.

Since the publication of a series of articles in the Boston Globe detailing the sexual abuse of children by priests in that diocese in 2002, city after city and diocese after diocese has had the same situation arise, Lennon pointed out. (Lennon is pictured below, holding a photograph of himself taken the year he was sexually assaulted by a priest.)

"A priest gets caught offending, and he’s moved to another parish,” said Lennon. “Often no one in a position to protect children is told that he’s got a history of abusing children, and he is free to commit more crimes against children."

Melanie Sakoda, a leader of the East Bay chapter of SNAP, agreed with Lennon.

"The practice has been to move the priest and silence the victims,” she said.

Both noted that it often takes years for the victims of clerical abuse to begin to deal with what was done to them.

"It was 50 years after I was raped at age 13 that I first acknowledged publicly what had been done to me,” said Lennon, referring to a meeting with diocese officials in San Francisco last year.

And, while individual priests have been charged and settlements have been reached in specific cases, “there’s yet to be a church-wide accountability,” said Sakoda.

"The reason we feel it’s necessary to take this to the ICC is that the bishops have not been held accountable for their decisions, decisions which led to the abuse of thousands of children,” she said.

Lennon mentioned that in the ad hoc group he’d participated in, church officials wanted to encourage that victims go to the church “and seek mediation with them. But the problem there is that, even if closure is reached in one case, the secrets stay secret,” he said.

"So far, the official position of the church has been to protect the church."

Lennon said one bishop, on hearing from an adult who was still having difficulties because of abuse suffered as a child, “told him that if Jesus Christ can be on the cross, you can get through this."

Such lack of compassion for the pain caused by the church’s prior actions fuels what Lennon called “a righteous anger."

"We want the church to do what’s right,” he said. “We want full disclosure of abuse cases and abusing priests, supportive therapy for victims, an admission of error from the church, and the church’s support for ending the statute of limitations on prosecuting child sexual abuse."

Since the stories about priests abusing children in the U.S.—including in Sacramento—gained public attention, similar cases have also come to light internationally. Ireland, Belgium and Germany have all had public “scandals” related to church officials covering up the abuse of children by priests.

Lennon and Sakoda, at left, outside the cathedral in downtown Sacramento.

In fact, Sakoda said, one of the women named as a victim in the complaint sent to the ICC had settled a suit with the church, but the one thing she really wanted was denied her.

"She wanted to make sure that the priest who abused her in her Midwestern parish would never be able to hurt another child,” said Sakoda.

"Instead, he’s been moved to a parish in India."

[]