The New Sex Abuse Commission

Perspective
February 11, 2015

http://povcrystal.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-new-sex-abuse-commission.html

There's been stuff in the news about the Vatican's new sex abuse commission. I'm glad they have a couple of sex abuse survivors on the commission, but I don't expect much from the commission in terms of actually making a difference in how the Vatican handles sex abuse. Here's a bit from Robert Mickens' recent Letter from Rome on this ...

[Letter from Rome: Where Is the Vatican 'Transparency' on Abuse?] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/letter-rome-17?key=a74e8aa5b18c76a88410b6543550eff9&utm_content=buffer7a426&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors held its first full plenary session in Rome last week under the direction of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley. They told journalists at a briefing on Saturday they were formulating suggestions for how Pope Francis should make bishops accountable for implementing protection guidelines. As expected, certain survivors’ groups and other critics of the Vatican dismissed this as yet more empty words. That’s unfortunate. But it’s also understandable, especially given the Vatican’s lack of transparency when it comes to dealing with such bishops. The head of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, offered a rare public display (at least for him) of how defensive church officials can be when pressed for more openness. Visibly irritated, he snapped back at an Italian TV journalist who attempted to ask why there was a delay in the trial of Jozef Wesolowski, the defrocked bishop and former papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic who has been charged with sexual abuse of young boys. “It has nothing to do [with this briefing],” the priest said curtly. When she pressed him an aide took the microphone from her and Fr. Lombardi said, “Enough! Let’s move on.” This, too, was unfortunate. The Holy See has publicly dealt with at least four bishops for either committing abuse or trying to cover it up. But there has been no transparency regarding their whereabouts or their status. In addition to Wesolowski, there is also Belgian Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who “resigned” in 2010 after admitting to molesting his young nephews. Where is he now? Has he been laicized? The Vatican has not said. Then there is Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who also “resigned,” just before the conclave of 2013 after being accused of sexual harassment by a number of seminarians and priests. Where is he? The Vatican will not say. And, of course, there’s the case of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, who was given a two-year suspended sentence after being criminally convicted for failing to report sexual abuse of minors. The Vatican supposedly carried out an investigation last September and two months later in a TV interview Cardinal O’Malley had this to say about the Finn case: “It’s a question the Holy See must address urgently.” Is it cynical to wonder what in the world transparency and urgency mean in the Vatican?

And meanwhile, more has come out about the mishandling of sex abuse in Australia by Cardinal Pell, the man in whom Pope Francis puts so much trust. One of the stories in the news today on how Pell mistreated abuse victims ... Catholic church fought sex abuse victim's claims to deter others, inquiry finds ...

[...] In reports released on Wednesday the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse examined the Catholic church’s widely condemned Towards Healing program in dealing with four people, and the handling of complaints by Ellis. All matters had been examined in public hearings over the past two years,

The church spent more than $1m fighting Ellis despite him asking for just a tenth of that amount in settlement, and put him through “distressing and unnecessary cross-examination” and threatened him with legal costs. “The archdiocese [of Sydney] wrongly concluded that it had never accepted that Father Duggan had abused Mr Ellis,” the report found ....

“One reason Cardinal Pell decided to accept this advice was to encourage other prospective plaintiffs not to litigate claims of child sexual abuse against the church.” The other reason found was that Pell believed Ellis was seeking “exorbitant damages” of millions of dollars. Pell “explicitly endorsed the major strategies of the defence”, the report said: “to defend the proposition that the trustees were not liable; that, if an offence had been admitted by the archdiocese, the archdiocese could not later deny that it took place; to appoint competent lawyers and substantially leave them to run the case or advise the archdiocese on how the case should be run.” ...

Finally, here's a past post from NCR by Fr. Thomas Doyle on the new sex abuse commission ... Pope's new abuse commission is another promise waiting to be broken