Vatican Faces United Nations Panel over Child Abuse Allegations

By Mary Gearin
ABC News
January 16, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-17/vatican-faces-un-panel-over-child-abuse-allegations/5204344

The Vatican has told a United Nations panel assessing the Holy See's adherence to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that it wants to be an example of global best practice when it comes to eliminating child sexual abuse by clergy or church personnel.

Vatican delegates at a historic hearing in Geneva also denied allegations of a cover-up, saying the church had set clear guidelines to protect children from predator Roman Catholic priests, whom Pope Francis has called "the shame of the church".

In what is the first time the Vatican has been questioned publicly over the issue of child sex abuse in the church, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said there was never any justification for any form of violence or exploitation of children.

However, he maintained that the Holy See is only legally responsible for abuse inside Vatican City.

And he told the panel at the end of the daylong session that, "we will take your questions seriously but we are not in a position to answer now".

Some victims' advocates have been disappointed by the church's response to questions by UN child protection experts, chiefly its insistence that it only has jurisdiction over the Holy See and is not responsible for crimes committed by priests worldwide.

Barbara Blaine, the president of the US-based Survivors' Network Of Those Abused By Priests, said: "We know full well that they have jurisdiction over every bishop in the whole world, and what we want to see is the Vatican punish the bishops who cover up the sex crimes. And we want them to turn over the information they have about crimes to police."

Miguel Hurtado, a Spaniard sexually molested by his parish priest, voiced disappointment at the Vatican delegates' statements after attending the session.

"Transparency is a very powerful tool when you are doing the right thing, " he said.

"When you have something to hide, you hide behind words and are not forthcoming with facts and details because facts and details are not on your side."

Kirsten Sandberg, chairwoman of the 18-strong UN committee also urged transparency from the Vatican.

"The best way to prevent abuses is to reveal old ones - openness instead of sweeping offences under the carpet," she said.

"It seems to date your procedures are not very transparent."

Ms Sandberg repeatedly pressed the officials to open up Vatican archives on cases of sexual abuse and pay compensation to young people raped or sodomised by priests.

Meanwhile, panel expert Sara De Jesus Oviedo Fierro told the Vatican delegates that the Holy See had "not established any mechanism to investigate perpetrators of sexual abuse and to prosecute them".

At the debate's end, she said the UN panel had "great expectations that new steps will be taken, that dialogue with civil society will happen, this will become a reality. This will attest to this new era, this new dawn for the Holy See."

Holy See "gets it"

Victims accuse bishops of covering up crimes and switching priests to other parishes to avoid prosecution, while courts have ordered dioceses to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, bankrupting a string of them in the US.

The Vatican also angered victim support groups last month by refusing to answer the UN committee's written questions in advance, saying its inquiries were confidential and that responsibility for dealing with abusers lay with local bishops.

However, Pope Francis told worshippers at morning Mass in the Vatican on Thursday that abuse scandals had "cost us a lot of money, but (paying damages) is only right."

He said bishops, priests and lay people were responsible for this "shame of the Church".

On December 5, Francis ordered the formation of a team of experts to look into the sexual abuse of minors in the Church, in his first major step to tackle the issue.

Vatican officials long played down the abuse scandal as a limited problem, but shocking revelations in the US, Ireland and then several European countries have turned it into a crisis in recent years.

Pope Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict, publicly apologised for the crimes committed by priests.

And Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, the former top Vatican official for abuse cases, told the panel: "The Holy See gets it, let's not say too late."

"There are certainly things that need to be done differently. It is not the policy of the Holy See to encourage cover-ups.

"Only the truth will help us move on to a situation where we can start being an example of best practice."

ABC/AFP