UNITED STATES
The Feminist Wire
March 5, 2012
By Catherine Morrisey-Ribeiro
Last September, Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), teamed with the Center for Constitutional Rights(CCR) to persuade the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to investigate the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity.
They argue the Vatican—the world’s smallest nation-state, geographically speaking—has for years used its enormous power to facilitate the systematic sexual abuse of children by clerics. On SNAP’s behalf, the CCR filed a detailed complaint with the ICC, along with thousands of pages of supporting documents. Blaine says that the battle to protect kids in the face of the Vatican’s long-standing intransigence led her to the ICC.
Nearly a decade after the Boston Globe’s exposé on church predators set off chain reactions in dioceses across the world—and a decade after U.S. bishops supposedly adopted a “zero tolerance” policy for sex abuse—the crimes continue. Priests rape kids, bishops cover for them, and the Vatican still stands behind it all.
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