ORANGE COUNTY (CA)
Orange County Register
December 20, 2018
By Scott Schwebkeand Deepa Bharath
Pope Francis’ decision to accept the resignation of an auxiliary Los Angeles bishop amid accusations of misconduct with a minor does little to erase decades of cover-up by the Vatican, some Southern California victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests said Wednesday.
One victim, Lee Bashforth, said Monsignor Alexander Salazar’s resignation, many years after his alleged offense, is “disappointing and upsetting” for survivors.
“This is a problem the Catholic Church had an opportunity to fix,” he said. “They shoveled it under the rug. And 16 years later, we’re still having the curtain pulled back to reveal they are doing the same stuff they’ve been doing for centuries — covering up for pedophile priests.”
Appallingly, sexual assaults by priests most often have not been treated as crimes, said Bashforth, who was abused as a boy by Michael Wempe, a priest with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at the time.
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