LONG ISLAND (NY)
Newsday
May 9, 2019
By Bart Jones
Advocates for clergy sex abuse victims on Thursday dismissed Pope Francis’ new rules on reporting allegations as an empty gesture that will perpetuate a culture of secrecy and cover-up.
The new church laws require all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sex abuse and cover-ups involving superiors, with whistleblower protections and no retroactive limits. They are required to report allegations to church officials and not police, and there are no church sanctions laid out for violators.
“It’s all cut from the same cloth of, ‘We can fix this problem ourselves,’ ” said John Salveson, who says he was abused by a priest at St. Dominic’s parish in Oyster Bay for seven years starting in 1969.
“We are talking about criminal activity. Criminal activity should be reported to criminal justice agencies — to the police, to the district attorneys, to the FBI,” he said. Often, church higher-ups “are the enablers.”
Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston-based attorney who also represents victims in New York, said the new laws “continue the secrecy which has enabled clergy sexual abuse to exist, allows the Catholic Church to continue to ineffectively self-police and basically discourages victims from just calling the police.
“History has taught us that the Vatican, with it’s with self-proclaimed laws and procedures, is incapable of protecting innocent children from being sexually abused,” said Garabedian, who was portrayed in the film “Spotlight” about the clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.