The U.N. Committee on Torture sharply questioned the Vatican this week over its handling of sexual abuse inside the Catholic Church. The hearing came just four months after the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child accused the Vatican of systematically turning a blind eye to decades of abuse and attempting to cover up sex crimes. During this week’s hearing, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi revealed the church had dismissed more than 800 priests for sexual abuse of children in the past decade.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said, “There were, since 2004 to the end of 2015, 848 priests who were dismissed from the clerical status and reduced to the lay status, and several hundred more had received other types of penalties, so that together they are about 3,500 priests.”
Barbara Blaine talking:
it seems as though the Vatican officials continue to split hairs and try to dodge responsibility. They claim to not have the authority to stop the sexual violence, and we are convinced that they do and that they are making lofty statements, but they’re not really taking action that would protect children.
$2.5 billion that they say has been paid in compensation and 800 priests. I think it’s really important to recognize that numbers are not going to protect children. We would say, where—what are the names of these individual predators, and where are they today? That kind of information is what would protect children. And we continue to receive reports that sexual predators remain in ministry. We think that Pope Francis and the Vatican should immediately remove all the sexual predators, and we think that they should be punishing the bishops who have transferred these predators and enabled them.
there’s no way of really knowing completely how many. The church’s own officials will admit to approximately 100,000 victims in the United States alone, but we believe there are many more. And our concern is that we keep hearing reports that priests who have been removed, allegedly removed, from ministry keep turning up, working in ministry in a new location. And so, we are not confident that children are not at risk. In fact, we believe there are children and vulnerable adults who are being raped and sodomized even today.
when I was growing up over in Toledo, Ohio, the priest in my parish began to sexually violate me in the summer between seventh and eighth grade. I didn’t tell anyone ’til I was well into adulthood, assumed it was my fault and at the same time felt helpless to stop it. But it wasn’t until I was into my thirties before I really went back to the church officials and tried to confront and face this. And when they didn’t help me, I started looking for other victims. And this was the 1980s, and there was a self-help group for everyone then, so we had a theory that we would just find each other and figure out how to find healing. Unfortunately, what we learned is that many of our perpetrators were still in ministry, and the church officials had really duped us into keeping us from law enforcement and promised that our perpetrators would be removed from ministry, when in fact that is not what happened.
Katherine Gallagher talking:
we consider what happened this week quite historic. As you indicated, this is the second time this year that a U.N. body has called the Vatican to account for its actions. And bringing it to the international level is really the appropriate place. As Barbara pointed out, this is a global problem, and it requires a global response. SNAP has heard from victims in 79 countries. And for far too long, these acts have been called “sexual abuse” or “inappropriate touching.” The actions have been minimized. What we’re hoping comes out of the Committee Against Torture is recognizing these acts for what they are—international crimes, torture, cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment—and that in doing so, it both validates what has been done to the survivors, the victims, the profound harm, as well as carries with it some of the legal triggers of recognizing torture, in terms of national prosecutions or even international action.
the Vatican actually signed the Convention on Torture 12 years ago. As most countries come to report every three or four years, the Vatican was nine years late in putting in its first report. SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights went to the International Criminal Court in 2011, and since that time, we have seen international focus put on this issue and a real recharacterization of the problem as isolated to certain countries or, again, just sexual abuse, and really recognizing it for the global crimes that it is and the role of the higher-ups in the Vatican for enabling these crimes.
we heard the Vatican press both before the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee Against Torture, saying, “OK, the Vatican had signed onto these treaties, but it’s really only that small territory in Rome that the obligations apply to.” Both committees pressed back on that and said, “No, anywhere where the Vatican has effective control over high-level officials, such as bishops and cardinals, where the policies and practices of the Vatican can be carried out.” And, unfortunately, what we’ve seen so far is that those policies have been to cover up these crimes, to obstruct justice, to encourage secrecy and confidentiality. And hopefully what we’ll be seeing now is clear instructions from the Committee Against Torture that anywhere where you have effective control over church officials, they must in fact comply with national authorities, mandatory reporting requirements, they must turn over known suspected priests who have engaged in acts of rape and sexual violence, and really put an end to these crimes.
Barbara Blaine talking:
if Pope Francis were sincere and if he wanted to protect children, we believe that he would punish the bishops. For example, right now, there is a bishop in Kansas City who has been found guilty of endangering children, and he’s still the bishop. And so, when the Catholic Church officials claim that they have cleaned everything up, we keep saying, “But where is the evidence of that?” And we’re not finding it, and in fact we’re finding just the opposite. It was only a couple years ago that a grand jury report from Philadelphia indicated that the grand jurors had found 37 accused predators working in ministry within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. And that’s actually one of the questions that the committee put to the Vatican officials. And as far as I heard, I did not hear any response to that question. And they asked specific questions, for example, about Father Jeyapaul, a priest, an Indian national, who had abused children in the—in a diocese in northern Minnesota, and he is still facing extradition and has not—has not returned to face the charges in Minnesota. And the church officials have been assisting him in his role as a fugitive and not insisting that he return to face those charges.
it’s really important that parents remain vigilant. It’s like in so many situations: No one wants to believe that someone that we revere and respect, someone who’s close to God, would actually sexually violate someone. And by all means, most priests don’t do this, but an alarming number—I mean, the church officials at the—Archbishop Tomasi admitted approximately 4 percent, and the statistics coming out from the U.S. Conference of Bishops would indicate it’s probably a little over 5 percent. But still, I think it’s important that they remain vigilant. And I think it’s really important that Pope Francis stop having all these lofty words and setting up a commission to study. We don’t need studies. Everyone knows that sexually violating a child is just—it’s a crime. And those things should be turned over to the police and not investigated in the church. And we should stop coddling and protecting the predators.
Katherine Gallagher talking:
The acts of torture documented in our report, with cover art by Megan Peterson, a survivor, quite powerful work, you know, the prevalent—I was mentioning torture includes a prevalent, severe mental harm. And we talk about survivors, but there are many people who have not survived these horrific acts. In Australia, they just found 40 cases of suicide, because you lose your family, in many cases, your friends, your community. The isolation and the guilt, the victim blaming, this leads far too many people to take their own lives. And the church often refers to these as crimes of the past. We met with a survivor in Switzerland who himself was assaulted when he was a preteen, and his eight-year-old sister came home from school in the 1970s reporting that she, too, had been raped. Just last year, she took her own life, after decades of trying to battle this problem and living with the long-standing harm. So it’s really devastating, and we’re very glad that the Committee Against Torture is looking at this with the seriousness it needs.
– source democracynow.org
Barbara Blaine, president and founder of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
Katherine Gallagher, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. For the last three years, she has served as counsel for SNAP in their international advocacy work.