UNITED STATES
BuzzFeed
August 27, 2018
By Paul Mones
Every Roman Catholic diocese and archdiocese must be held publicly accountable for their complicity in the sexual abuse of generations of children.
Ever since the Boston Globe’s 2002 revelations of widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, a wave of lawsuits have been filed against dioceses around the nation. The goal of these cases was to get justice for the physical and emotional suffering endured by victims of abuse and to reform the child protection practices of the church.
In most states, however, the church does not need to be the least bit concerned about being sued by abuse survivors or paying even a nickel for the devastation wrought by its criminal behavior. Firstly, it knows most victims of abuse will never reveal or report it. But more importantly, even if they do come forward, in all but a handful of states the justice system unfortunately operates to protect the church from being sued in the first place.
Most states, like New York and Pennsylvania, have draconian statutes of limitations that prevent a person from suing unless they do so within a few years of being abused. This means the system has no recourse for those who summon the courage to come forward years, and often decades, after the abuse took place — and keep in mind, the majority of people never report their abuse at all. And it is not only a victim’s embarrassment, confusion, and shame that prevents them from reporting. Church leaders, aware of their liability, have been repeatedly shown deliberately failing to disclose complaints against their own clergy to law enforcement and taking actions that stymie victims from reporting.
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