UNITED STATES
Truthout
Tuesday, 25 June 2013 10:20
By Pam Spees, Center for Constitutional Rights | Op-Ed
Last week, for the first time ever, an international body asked questions about the Vatican’s handling of widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence. Last Wednesday, survivors of rape and sexual violence by Catholic priests met with members of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in Geneva, calling the Vatican to account for its ongoing failure to abide by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a U.N. treaty that the Vatican long ago signed but, like the children it is designed to protect, has systematically neglected.
Wednesday’s historic meeting is the latest sign that a growing global movement is closing in on that day when Vatican officials will be held accountable for their systemic enabling of rape and sexual abuse. In March, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), submitted a report to the UN Committee outlining the myriad ways the Vatican is in perpetual violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Now the CRC has called on the Vatican to report on its implementation, or lack thereof, of its human rights obligations.
The global expansion of this movement is a product of survivors’ efforts to internationalize the search for justice in response to a problem they came to understand as international in scope. As SNAP founder Barbara Blaine observed, “It’s a worldwide problem. We’re a worldwide movement.”
The first big step in the quest for worldwide accountability was the September 2011 complaint that SNAP and CCR submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor setting out the ways in which the magnitude, scale and gravity of the offenses against children amount to crimes against humanity. In April 2012, we submitted additional evidence that had come to light since the first filing.
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