UNITED STATES
The Catholic Whistleblowers
By: the Catholic Whistleblowers Steering Committee
Passing the Child Victims Act would help to protect children, while bringing into the spotlight the names of perpetrators of child sexual abuse and thus warn the community. Passing this Act also would provide a route to justice for victims who deserve such a route.
Furthermore, on its website, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says: “Regardless of when the abuse occurred, a cleric against whom there is an established or admitted act of child sexual abuse is permanently removed from the priesthood. There is no statute of limitations for removing a cleric who has sexual {sic} abused a minor from public ministry in the Catholic Church” (emphasis by underscore added).[1]
How did this come to be? In 2003 Pope John Paul II authorized a change in church procedures so that the church’s statute of limitations would never again prevent the church from dealing with an abuser priest, no matter how long in the past the crime occurred. Then, on May 21, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI formalized into church law the authority that Pope John Paul II had granted in 2003.
This change in church law is retroactive which explains how the church has been able to deal with very old cases. Moreover, the change concerns both the crime of sexual abuse of a minor or of a vulnerable adult and also the actions to recover compensation for damages incurred because of the crime. Thus, it regards both “criminal” law and “civil” law, as we would say in the United States.
The key to the “civil” component of the change in the church’s statute of limitations is found in canon 1729, §1 of the Code of Canon Law which provides that within the penal (criminal) trial itself an injured party can bring a contentious action (a civil action) to repair damages incurred as a result of the crime.
Thus, the change in the statute of limitations (referred to as “prescription” in Canon Law) applies to both the crime of sexual abuse of a minor or of a vulnerable adult by a cleric and also to the damages incurred because of the crime. The “civil” action gets included with the “criminal” action.
So, while Catholic Church secrecy does not give us all the details of clergy sexual abuse cases as would American courts, clearly church law provides for both “criminal” and “civil” retroactive dealing with sexual abuse of a minor or of a vulnerable adult by a priest.
Hence, Catholic bishops in the United States should support comparable changes to states’ statutes of limitations.
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[1] Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Did you know … ?“, 2013,http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/Did-You-Know-2013-2.pdf [See: #13]
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