Another small beginning in getting institutions to take responsibility for the indecencies committed by their personnel, in the hope that the policy of silence will become too expensive to keep.
From SantiagoTimes.cl
The three victims of sexual abuse by ex-priest Fernando
Karadima have filed a civil suit against the Archbishop of Santiago, calling
for the Church to assume responsibility.
The three men who were sexually abused between 1955 and 1980
by Fernando Karadima of the El Bosque Parish in Las Condes, Santiago, have
filed a suit against Archbishop of Santiago Ricardo Ezzati demanding economic
compensation for the crimes committed against them.
ChurchSept5
Catedral de Santiago. Photo by Carlos Eduardo Rodríguez /
Flickr
The men in question are Dr. James Hamilton, journalist Juan
Carlos Cruz and philosopher José Andrés Murillo and are represented by lawyer
Juan Pablo Hermosilla. They say that the suit is directed towards the
archbishop in an attempt to make the Church assume responsibility as an
institution that acted negligently during the cases that were brought forward
against Karadima.
“We’re trying to break the cornerstone of sexual abuse —
silence — and this is done through what we are doing now,” José Murillo told
Radio Universidad de Chile. "Every time there is abuse there is damage
done, and if the abuse was committed by someone who belongs to an institution
... there is an institutional responsibility, and we want this to be
established.”
The three victims claim that initial reports of abuse were
dismissed by the Church, with the case finally being opened in 2004 when some
of El Bosque’s parishioners and ex-priests presented a formal accusation
against Karadima.
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