Shadow Report

Center for Constitutional Rights
April 14, 2014

http://www.ccrjustice.org/pdf/CCR_SNAP_Shadow_Report_apr2014.pdf

[full text]

Naming is important. Pope John Paul II recognized as much when he observed that “[t]orture must be called by its proper name” upon the Holy See’s accession to the Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.3

Yet nowhere in the Holy See’s Initial Report under the Convention (“Initial Report”) does it make any mention of the widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence committed by Catholic clergy against hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable adults around the world.4

There is no mention of acts that have resulted in an astonishing and incalculable amount of harm around the world – profound and lasting physical and mental suffering – with little to no accountability and access to redress.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”) and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (“SNAP”) welcome the opportunity to submit this report, which sets out the refusal of the Holy See to uphold the core principle of respect for the inherent dignity and protection of the physical and mental well-being of the human person enshrined in the Convention against Torture (“Convention” or “CAT”) through its absolute prohibition on torture, and obligations set forth therein. This Committee has played an important role in recognizing rape and other forms of sexual violence as what they are – forms of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as is discussed further herein. This committee has also articulated the importance of naming such acts in this way so as to “directly advance the Convention’s overarching aim of preventing torture and ill-treatment. Naming and defining this crime will promote the Convention’s aim, inter alia, by alerting everyone, including perpetrators, victims, and the public, to the special gravity of the crime of torture.”5

By contrast, the Vatican has consistently minimized the harm caused by the actions of the clergy, through both the direct acts of sexual violence and church officials’ actions which follow, such as cover-ups and victim-blaming. As a member of the Parliament of Victoria (Australia) recently observed:

The Catholic church minimized and trivialized the problem; contributed to abuse not being disclosed, or not being responded to… ensured that the Victorian community remained uninformed of the abuse; and ensured that perpetrators were not held accountable with the tragic result being that children continued to be abused. We found that today’s church leaders view the current question of abuse of children as a ‘short term embarrassment’, which should be 2 handled as quickly as possible to cause the least damage to the church’s standing. They do not see the problems as raising questions about the church’s own culture. 6

The Holy See’s Initial Report to this Committee is itself evidence of the minimization of these offenses and the resulting harm. While the Holy See’s report unequivocally condemns torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and purports to claim that its status as a party to this Convention serves as an example to others,7 it makes no mention of the widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence against children and vulnerable adults by its priests and others associated with the Church. Upon accession to the Convention, the Holy See noted that it had “unequivocally condemned ‘whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself.”8

Still, after numerous commissions, inquiries, ongoing scandals and tens of thousands of victims coming forward, the Holy See has not recognized in its reporting to this Committee the ways in which the sexual violence it has enabled and fostered have “violated the integrity” of countless human persons, resulting in harm that is devastating on an individual and collective level.