Church in
Crisis
Survivors’ advocacy groups press review board for
action
By CHUCK COLBERT
Pressing their case for more immediate action, representatives of
the nation’s two leading clerical sex abuse survivors’ advocacy
groups met this week in Oklahoma City with members of the National Catholic
Review Board.
When the U.S. bishops established the review board last June in
Dallas, they hoped to stem the clerical sex abuse crisis with the board’s
help in enforcing reforms the bishops adopted, including compliance with the
zero-tolerance policy.
Oklahoma Republican Gov. Frank Keating serves as chairman of a
13-member lay advisory board.
For an hour and 15 minutes, more than a dozen survivors, from both
the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, and The Linkup
raised various concerns. Among them were two key ones: some dioceses’
noncompliance with the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young
People” adopted by the U.S. bishops in Dallas and the need for holding the
hierarchy of the American church accountable.
SNAP and Linkup representatives presented evidence that 13 of the
nation’s 195 dioceses have failed to comply with the zero-tolerance
directive.
“We are afraid that dozens of priests with histories of
sexual abuse remain in public ministry,” SNAP said in a written statement.
“More and more perpetrators are suing their accusers, often with their
bishops’ tacit approval, thereby intimidating victims and circumventing or
interfering with lay review boards and law enforcement.”
Keating said that he would soon make public a list of dioceses and
bishops that fail to follow the strict zero-tolerance policy. He said that most
dioceses are complying with the Dallas charter.
During the meeting, SNAP and Linkup representatives urged the
review board to ask the Conference of Major Superiors of Men to reconsider its
August decision to allow abusers to continue in ministry in situations removed
from parishioners. The conference represents religious orders -- about
one-third of the nation’s 46,000 priests.
While the U. S. bishops agreed under zero tolerance to remove
priest abusers from ministry, the conference said that the bishops ignored
Catholic belief in redemption and research showing that some perpetrators can
be rehabilitated.
Keating said that he and the board’s vice chairwoman, Anne
Burke, an Illinois judge, would write the Conference of Major Superiors of Men
with the “urgent request that they implement precisely the same policy the
bishops approved in Dallas,” according to the Associated Press.
Other concerns that SNAP and Linkup have raised with the board
include: dioceses’ use of deceptive and questionable outreach efforts such
as staffing hotlines with lawyers, and subpoenaing individual survivors’
personal records.
The board meets next month in California.
Freelance journalist Chuck Colbert writes from Cambridge,
Mass.
National Catholic Reporter, September 27,
2002
|
