Bishops Hide Documents Proving Their Complicity in Child Sex Abuse - Clohessy

Voice of Russia
February 6, 2014

http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_02_06/Bishops-hide-documents-proving-their-complicity-in-child-sex-abuse-Clohessy-8607/

The UN has accused the Vatican of adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest thousands of children over decades. And international community demands that all clergy who are suspected or known child abusers should be "immediately removed". In its report, the UN committee severely criticized the Holy See for its attitude toward homosexuality, contraception and abortion stating it should review its policies. David Clohessy, national director and spokesman for the Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the largest and oldest self-help group for victims of clergy molestation in the United States, spoke to the Voice of Russia correspondent on the issue.

David, let's just jump right in and – can you give us a comment on the news that in its report, the UN watchdog for children's rights has accused the Vatican of "systematically" adopting policies allowing priests to sexually abuse thousands of children?

We believe that the Vatican panel is right on target. Church officials have known about and concealed this crisis for decades, they continue to. They say all the right things in public, but their private behavior is radically different. They continue to rebuff law enforcement and intimidate victims and move predators. So we are very grateful that the UN has done this investigation and released this report.

I've got to be honest with you, basically what you described is a conspiracy and a conspiracy that hides a crime is in itself a crime. How are these people not in jail?

It is a very good question. Bishops are very smart men, they have plenty of smart lawyers and they are very careful to keep their fingerprints of these cases and to keep the documents that prove their complicity hidden. And sadly too often secular officials in government and law enforcement have been far too timid to do what this UN panel has done and launch investigations and file prosecutions. So we hope that that will be one result of this disclosure. We hope that government officials and law enforcement officials will develop some spine and start similar probes themselves at the national level across the globe.

I'm still pretty shocked about this story. I mean molesting children is a crime and we are talking about innocent children here, we are talking about priests taking abuse of their power. I still don't understand how these people are not in jail. But let's go back. The Vatican responded by saying it would examine the report, but also accused its authors of interference. Is this a rightful tactics? Or should the Vatican "immediately remove" all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers, according to the UN report?

We are moving known or suspected child molesters from parishes, it is absolute bare minimum bishops should do. Catholic officials should also expose and punish church staff who ignore and conceal these crimes as well. But I think we are just seeing in the Vatican's response today – this business of attacking the motives of this independent panel of experts, who by the way are volunteers, attacking their motives and attacking their report from the beginning. It is the sign of attitude that Vatican bishops have long had. And I guess I would just ask the question – imagine if church officials attack respected panel like this in public, just imagine how those church officials treat child sex abuse victims in private.

Well, that is a very scary thought.

You can see there is virtually no remorse expressed by Vatican officials and not even a willingness to say: "Surely there are some helpful recommendations in here", but just a vague promise that church bishops will study this report. To be honest no ones' study is needed, there are so many simple steps, long overdue steps that church officials could and should take to protect kids now that you don't need to be a scientist or appoint this study panel is a pope plans to do to really safeguard children.

Let's talk about that for a moment. How can we safeguard the children?

That is a great question. First of all, every single person, who sees or suspects or suffers child's sex crimes has to find the courage to report to law enforcement. That is step one. I think step two is that secular officials and government and law enforcement have to reform our predator friendly laws and they have to pursue those who conceal abuse in every single institution whether it is a non-profit, whether it is a government, whether it is a church, whether it is a school. Those two steps are key. And finally I think parents must have very honest conversations, difficult conversations with their children and talk about what parts of the body that no one should touch and what to do if some adult tries to touch those private parts of your body. Those three steps can make a huge difference.

That sounds like very logical steps. I'd like to go back to the wording of some of the reports and I have one question for you. One of the key words was 'a non-child abuser'. How can a priest be a non-child abuser? Doesn't that mean that he is a criminal and shouldn't law enforcement become involved at that point in time?

Law enforcement should become involved long before a predator priest is known to be a predator. Law enforcement should be called immediately when suspicions arise. But I think what the report refers to is that there are great many child molesting clerics who actually do admit their guilt when confronted by church supervisors.

And at that point in time they are shuttled off to someone else in the hopes that they don't do this again and they say sorry and will disappear this person hopefully the problem will go away.

Yeah, that is exactly right. And of course that is just about the most irresponsible behavior that I think any of us can imagine. Church officials will maintain that they used to behave that way and they've now reformed. But quite frankly our group SNAP has been around for 25 years and we've seen precious little reform by the church hierarchy.

Let's talk about that for a moment – you've said that your group has been around for 25 years so when did the sex abuse scandals in the Church first come to light?

Well, in this country the very first predator priest case that attracted national attention was in 1985 and then after a few years it sort of fell off the radar screen and then there were another batch of very prominent and disturbing cases in 1993. Then again things fell off the radar screen and 11 years ago is probably when the most sudden wave of abuse victims stepping forward hit. So the bottom line is this- privately church officials have been dealing with this scandal for centuries, publicly they have been dealing with it for 25-30 years. There has been plenty of time for them to learn how to respond it appropriately and the fact that they are not shows that it is not a lack of knowledge on their part, it is a lack of courage, a lack of will, a lack of compassion.