LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Encyclopedia of Arkansas
Oct. 10, 2019
By William Lindsey
Since 2002, when the public became widely aware of sexual abuse of minors by clergy members, an international movement has developed to address such abuse. In January 2002, the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team published a ground-breaking series about abuse in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts, and its extensive cover-up for years. This exposé brought international attention to the problem and led to criminal investigation of Catholic officials in Boston. When the files of the Boston archdiocese were opened due to legal actions following the “Spotlight” report, it was found that abuse by priests was documented in many dioceses other than Boston, leading more cases to come to light. Individual clergy of various denominations have been exposed as abusers in Arkansas over the years, but only in the twenty-first century has the systemic extent of such abuse started to come to light thanks, in large part, to ongoing monitoring of such abuse. However, the exact scope of sexual abuse by clergy in the state remains poorly documented, with documentation currently limited to Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist denominations.
As a precursor to the “Spotlight” reports, journalist Jason Berry published an investigation of abuse in the Catholic diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, titled Lead Us Not Into Temptation (1992). This book provided one of the first glimpses of the problem of sexual abuse by clergy and how it was being treated by Catholic officials. In response to the Boston Globe series, when the U.S. Catholic bishops met in Dallas in 2002, they adopted the “Dallas Charter,” which promised a zero-tolerance policy regarding abuse of minors in Catholic institutions. As the bishops met, journalists Brooks Egerton and Reese Dunklin published an article in the Dallas Morning News reporting that two-thirds of bishops had allowed priests accused of abuse of minors to work in their dioceses.
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