WASHINGTON (DC)
USA TODAY
May 9, 2019
By Lindsay Schnell
Peter Isley has been disappointed by the Catholic Church so many times, he’s lost count.
Isley, a survivor of sexual abuse and one of the founding members of Ending Clergy Abuse, read Thursday’s news from the Vatican, and felt another wave of frustration. The Catholic Church, Isley said, just doesn’t get it.
On Thursday, Pope Francis issued a new law that requires all Catholic priests and nuns to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-up by their superiors to church authorities. Described by some media outlets as a “groundbreaking” new law, advocates who have pushed for more transparency from the Catholic Church say this is just more of the same.
The problem, according to Isley and other advocates, is that the church doesn’t need to get itself any more involved – it needs outside input. Specifically, it needs local law enforcement to be part of the reporting process.
“Bishops reporting to themselves, that’s been the problem from the beginning,” Isley said. “All they did was add another layer of bureaucracy; this doesn’t require civil authorities. What we need are police and prosecutors.
“Let’s get the bishop to the crime scene first? Geez, that is not the guy you want. They need to watch ‘Law & Order’ to understand how this should work.”
The new law provides whistle-blower protections for anyone making a report. It also states that dioceses around the world must have a system in place to receive allegations confidentially. And it outlines procedures for conducting preliminary investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal or religious superior.
But as Zach Hiner, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), points out, most clergy have no background in conducting investigations. That should be left to the experts.
“If the church was truly listening to the pulse of the public and of survivors, they would know that they should be mandating priests and nuns report everything to outside, secular authorities,” Hiner said.
“I get the argument that in some places of the world Catholics are discriminated against. However, for most of the world, that’s not the case. In most of the world we have police and prosecutors who care about local communities and want to keep them safe, and that’s who we charge to get to the bottom of things like this,” he said.
The new law is the latest effort from Francis to respond to the global eruption of the sex abuse and cover-up scandal that has devastated the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy for the past few decades. It also provides a new legal framework for U.S. bishops to use as they prepare to adopt accountability measures of their own next month.
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