Un Slams Vatican over Handling Child Sex Abuse Cases

Press TV
May 23, 2014

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/05/23/363884/un-slams-vatican-over-child-sex-abuse/

[with video]

The United Nations Committee against Torture has slammed the Vatican over its handling of sexual abuse of minors by pedophile priests, saying clerics must comply with a UN anti-torture treaty.

The UN committee said on Friday that Vatican officials have failed to report abuse charges properly, transferred abusive priests rather than punishing them as well as failed to pay adequate compensation to victims.

The panel of 10 independent experts called on the Holy See to cooperate in prosecuting all cases of suspected abuse, adding that all cases of suspected sexual abuse must be referred to authorities for investigation.

The UN committee also asked the Vatican to stop protecting suspected priests and immediately suspend them, urging the Holy See to establish an independent complaints mechanism for possible victims of abuse over the past decades.

Victims accuse Roman Catholic authorities of protecting abusive clerics and of ignoring their complaints.

The criticism follows the UN committee’s public grilling of Vatican officials during a hearing earlier this month in Geneva and it is the second time in three months a UN human rights body has slammed the Vatican over its handling of sexual abuse of minors by priests.

In January, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child denounced the Vatican for adopting policies allowing priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children.

The committee also blasted the Vatican’s practice of transferring the abusing clergymen from parish to parish in a bid to cover up their crimes.