UN Presses Catholic heirarchy on Child Abuse

UN panel presses Catholic hierarchy on handling of child sex abuse by priests
Vatican questioned over cover-ups of abuse cases, perpetrators evading punishment and poor co-operation with civil authorities

A sex abuse case cited by the UN was that of Pierre Pican, who as bishop of Bayeux, was charged with failing to report a paedophile priest.

The Vatican has come under intense pressure from a United Nations panel to explain its handling of clerical sex abuse as representatives of the Holy See were questioned on the global scandal for the first time at length and in public.

International experts from the UN's committee on the rights of the child grilled a delegation from the Holy See, which is regarded as a sovereign state, on Thursday, as victims of sexual abuse by priests flew into Geneva to watch the highly unusual proceedings.

As the hearing got under way, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See's envoy to the UN in Geneva, kept to the line that the Holy See was distinct from the global Catholic church and had little jurisdiction in countries beyond the Vatican city-state.

"Priests are not functionaries of the Vatican," Tomasi told the committee. "Priests are citizens of their own states, and they fall under the jurisdiction of their own country."

However, Pam Spees, a lawyer with the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is seeking to hold Vatican officials responsible for sexual abuse crimes, called this response "shocking". "It was a pretty direct, pretty blunt effort to sidestep the questions," she said.

The guidelines already put in place by the Holy See and Catholic churches around the world had, "when properly applied", presented a way of eliminating the scourge of abuse, said Tomasi.

However, Sara de Jesus Oviedo Fierro, the committee's main human rights investigator, contested this view, saying the Holy See had "not established any mechanism to investigate perpetrators of sexual abuse and to prosecute them".

Kirsten Sandberg, chair of the 18-strong UN committee, told the Vatican delegation: "The view of committee is that the best way to prevent abuses is to reveal old ones – openness instead of sweeping offences under the carpet. It seems to date your procedures are not very transparent."

Tomasi said the Vatican would welcome any suggestions from the UN committee that would assist it in ensuring "efficient implementation" of reforms.

Those suggestions – and with them a torrent of questions relating to the Catholic church's response, past and present, to the scandal – were not slow in coming. Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which has 15,000 US members and 4,000 foreign members since being launched 25 years ago, said the Vatican response was "more of the same" and fell far short of what victims wanted.

"These church officials continually cite new policies that sound progressive and sound adequate, and yet we never see any evidence of following these policies. The policies are empty, and the policies have no teeth to be enforced," she said. "They have done this so many times over the decades.

"What we want to see is the Vatican punish bishops who covered up sex crimes and we want them to turn over information they have about crimes to police," she said.

Experts interrogated the Holy See on many issues, including what they said was a lack of transparency in its handling of abuse cases and their aftermaths, punishment of abusers that was often insufficient and inadequate co-operation with civil judicial authorities.

Questioned about an instance from 2001, when Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, a then senior Vatican official, praised a French bishop, Pierre Pican, for not reporting a priest in his diocese who had raped a boy to civil authorities, Charles Scicluna, a former sex crimes prosecutor for the Vatican and auxiliary bishop of Malta, indicated that this was an area on which the Holy See knew the approach had to change.

Pointing out that the example was from more than a decade ago, he said: "The Holy See gets it. Let's not say 'too late' or not. There are certain things that need to be done differently."

He added: "It is not a policy of the Holy See to encourage cover-ups."

The delegation's appearance in Geneva was a mandatory part of the Holy See's duties as a signatory of the UN convention on the rights of the child, which it ratified in 1990. The build-up to the hearing had already been hit by controversy when, in December, the Holy See refused to provide detailed information requested on abuse cases and specific information concerning their handling and investigation, citing confidentiality norms.

On Thursday, as the panel began a day of questioning, it showed little sign of wanting to indulge the delegation. One expert asked specifically about the Vatican's handling of two cases that have caused particular embarrassment to the church: one from the past, that of the sexual scandals of the disgraced Legion of Christ founder Marcial Maciel, and another which is ongoing, concerning Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former apostolic nuncio, or ambassador, to the Dominican Republic. Wesolowski was recalled to Rome this summer after facing accusations of abusing teenage boys.

Tomasi dodged the committee's question about whether Wesolowski would be turned over to secular authorities for prosecution. The Vatican has said it does not extradite its own citizens. Tomasi said Wesolowski was being investigated by the Vatican's own prosecutors.

Another expert focused on why in the past abusive priests had been simply moved from one parish to another and often allowed to have more contact with children.

"I think this type of practice needs to be ceased," she said, adding that the Holy See needed to tackle the entire problem "in a more comprehensive and complete way".

In their remarks, both Scicluna and Tomasi said the Catholic church was keen to become "an example of best practice" in the sphere of child protection. They said that changes – including a set of guidelines unveiled in 2011 – provided a framework for effective handling of the problem. Tomasi also made it clear that there was no excuse for violent or exploitative behaviour towards children. "Such crimes can never be justified, whether committed in the home, in schools, in community and sports programmes, in religious organisations structures," he said.

Last month Pope Francis announced the establishment of a new committee to fight clerical sex abuse, a direct result of consultation with cardinal advisers from outside the Vatican.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/un-criticises-vatican-coverups-child-sex-abuse-catholic-priests

The sentence I have highlighted shows they haven't changed at all!

Yes, I saw that in this morning's news. Opening a new liberal front in the church.

A liberal front that still won't hand over paedophiles to the authorities.

Do you really think they have changed Quill when they are still saying things like that?

Well, I just take a wait and see attitude. Francis has apparently brought substantial changes, tho not in Church orthodoxy. This one seems somewhat in-between.

Somewhat in-between? This is the really big thing they had to face and do something about. Instead it seems they have the same old attitude.

Well, it doesn't reach the orthodoxy. That's all I'm saying. Obviously Francis has announced really big, big changes. Just not inside the Church ideology.

He tells them what to do and say, especially on this matter, so whatever changes he has talked about, the most important one has not changed. It can only be changed by him, giving direct orders.

Well, the Church is not a democracy. It is hierarchical in nature.

When I speak of structure, or orthodoxy, I mean possibly female priests, for example.

Child abuse and paedophilia are evils that have occurred, but not as a part of orthodoxy.

But the church has hidden and concealed them and moved them to different parishes so that the police couldn't find them, and refused to co-operate with the authorities, so the structure has been involved.

Sassy wrote:But the church has hidden and concealed them and moved them to different parishes so that the police couldn't find them, and refused to co-operate with the authorities, so the structure has been involved.  

Yes, it has done that.

But you are using structure in a different way than I. It is not Church orthodoxy to molest children. That is outlawry. It is not a movement on Church structure.

However, it has been a definite movement within the church, sanctioned and assisted by the previous Pope, to protect those that do it.

Actually the previous Pope defrocked 171 priests for child abuse.

Well, that goes someway towards making up for the number he covered up before he became Pope, obviously thought he couldn't get away with it any more:

Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests'

The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.

In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.

The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.

The Panorama special, Sex Crimes And The Vatican, investigates the details of this little-known document for the first time. The programme also accuses the Catholic Church of knowingly harbouring paedophile clergymen. It reveals that priests accused of child abuse are generally not struck off or arrested but simply moved to another parish, often to reoffend. It gives examples of hush funds being used to silence the victims.

Before being elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April last year, the pontiff was Cardinal Thomas Ratzinger who had, for 24 years, been the head of the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the department of the Roman Catholic Church charged with promoting Catholic teachings on morals and matters of faith. An arch-Conservative, he was regarded as the 'enforcer' of Pope John Paul II in cracking down on liberal challenges to traditional Catholic teachings.

Five years ago he sent out an updated version of the notorious 1962 Vatican document Crimen Sollicitationis - Latin for The Crime of Solicitation - which laid down the Vatican's strict instructions on covering up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe at all times.

Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with direct by Rome.

Patrick Wall, a former Vatican-approved enforcer of the Crimen Sollicitationis in America, tells the programme: "I found out I wasn't working for a holy institution, but an institution that was wholly concentrated on protecting itself."

And Father Tom Doyle, a Vatican lawyer until he was sacked for criticising the church's handling of child abuse claims, says: "What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.

"When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another. So there's total disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are going to have a whole new crop of victims in the next place. This is happening all over the world."

The investigation could not come at a worse time for Pope Benedict, who is desperately trying to mend the Church's relations with the Muslim world after a speech in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said that Islam was spread by holy war and had brought only evil to the world.

The Panorama programme is presented by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a priest when he was 14. He said: "What gets me is that it's the same story every time and every place. Bishops appoint priests who they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens."

Last night Eileen Shearer, director of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults said: "The Catholic Church in England and Wales (has) established a single set of national policies and procedures for child protection work. We are making excellent progress in protecting children and preventing abuse."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-407808/Pope-led-cover-child-abuse-priests.html#ixzz2qmesVWg9
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If Tomasi won't even make a verbal commitment to handing over a priest accused of child abuse to the criminal authorities, he certainly won't do it in practice. I quite agree with making it a criminal offence to knowingly risk children's safety by simply moving known molesters to new pastures.

I simply don't understand how they let them get away with it Lovey, all those damaged children, all over the world.

Sorry my bad - on first reading I thought they were pressing for the criminalisation of practice of 'moving on'paedophile priests. Good for the UN for trying to get answers don't to inspire much confidence imo.

Unfortunately, because the Vatican is a country in itself and the orders come from the Vatican, they can't do that. I wish they could! And as you so, the answers would seen to indicate that the status quo is going to stay!

Ahh ... part of reply was eaten sending it...

When the words and actions don't match, i believe in looking at the actions. Or non-action, in this case.

Exactly, words mean nothing, it's what happens that counts.

Sassy wrote:Exactly, words mean nothing, it's what happens that counts.

It's a shame you don't walk the walk yourself then.

I do, all the time. At the moment I can't, I'm too sick, but I won't be soon and I'll be back out there fighting.