Child sexual abuse in UK Catholic church
‘swept under the carpet’ - IICSA
Owen Bowcott and Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian
Tue 10 Nov 2020 12.00 GMT
Pope Francis asked Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales, to stay in his post, despite a damning report that criticised his leadership and concluded that the church repeatedly prioritised its reputation over the welfare of child sex abuse victims.
In its final review of the church, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) said the Vatican’s failure to cooperate with the investigation “passes understanding”.
The 162-page report said “the church’s neglect of the physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of children and young people in favour of protecting its reputation was in conflict with its mission of love and care for the innocent and vulnerable.”
Of Nichols, it stated: “There was no acknowledgment of any personal responsibility to lead or influence change. Nor did he demonstrate compassion towards victims in the recent cases which we examined.”
Calls for Nichols’s resignation grew in the wake of the publication of the report on Tuesday. An anonymous survivor who gave evidence told the Guardian: “Cardinal Nichols is the moral leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales, he has lost all moral authority and must go … This report once again demonstrates that the Catholic church is not a safe place for children.”
Members of the survivors group White Flowers Alba called upon Cardinal Nichols and the present papal nuncio, Archbishop Adams, to “resign immediately”.
Another victim, identified by the inquiry only as A711, said: “The church needs a seismic shift in culture, especially at the top. If there is any hope at all of real change it will require a relinquishing of power, and a will to treat survivors as human beings.”
Between 1970 and 2015, the church in England and Wales received more than 900 complaints involving more than 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse, made against more than 900 individuals, including priests, monks and volunteers.
They are right up there with Pakistani grooming gangs!
The sexual abuse of children involved instances of “masturbation, oral sex, vaginal rape and anal rape”. On occasions, the inquiry says, it was accompanied by “sadistic beatings driven by sexual gratification” as well as “deeply manipulative behaviour by those in positions of trust”.
One child estimated that between the ages of 11 and 15 he had been abused hundreds of times by a priest. “After each incident he was required to make confession, and the priest concerned made it plain that his sister’s place at a local convent school depended on his compliance,” the report says.
When complaints were made, the church invariably failed to support victims and survivors but took action to protect alleged perpetrators by moving them to a different parish. “Child sexual abuse,” the report says, “was swept under the carpet.”
The inquiry asked the Vatican’s ambassador to the UK, the papal nuncio, to participate. “Very limited information was forthcoming,” the report says. “After several months of correspondence, the Holy See belatedly confirmed it would not provide a witness statement.
“Their lack of cooperation passes understanding.”
Not really! They're still circling the wagons.
Prof Alexis Jay, the chair of the inquiry, said: “For decades, the Catholic church’s failure to tackle child sexual abuse consigned many more children to the same fate. It is clear that the church’s reputation was valued above the welfare of victims, with allegations ignored and perpetrators protected. Even today, the responses of the Holy See appear at odds with the pope’s promise to take action on this hugely important problem.”
Richard Scorer, a solicitor at the law firm Slater and Gordon, which represented 32 survivors, said: “Cardinal Nichols needs to resign right away – in any other walk of life he would be gone immediately. This is a church that cannot be trusted to protect children. The only way forward now is a mandatory reporting law, so that abuse cannot be covered up, and independent external oversight of church safeguarding. ”
One survivor represented by Slater and Gordon who gave evidence before the inquiry said: “Vincent Nichols will retire with a full pension – meanwhile, the victims that he denied justice to have to live on, still suffering.
“The fact is Nichols is a serial protector of paedophiles and he is the person that you should least expect it from. The head of a church should have the greatest morals of all but instead they were sending paedophiles to other areas of the country – and America – in an attempt to cover the abuse up.”
David Enright, a solicitor at Howe & Co, which represented 20 of the victims, said: “The church has had many, many chances to reform and root out child abuse. It has failed. It is with heavy hearts that my clients, many of them devout Catholics, conclude that the only safe course of action is to take safeguarding of children out of the hands of the Catholic church and into the hands of accountable lay professionals.”
Responding to calls for Nichols’ departure, a church spokesperson said the cardinal would not be resigning following the inquiry’s criticisms because he was “determined to put it right”.
In accordance with Vatican rules, Nichols wrote to the Holy See about four weeks ago in the run-up to his 75th birthday, which was on Sunday, to offer his resignation. Pope Francis had asked him to continue as a cardinal, the spokesperson said.
A statement issued by Nichols and the archbishop of Liverpool, Malcolm McMahon, said the Catholic church welcomed the report, which would “inform” improvements in “safeguarding in all aspects of the church’s life”.
It added: “We apologise to all victims and survivors who have not been properly listened to, or properly supported by us.”
You could possibly start listening now! How does he, who's hands are dirty, make things clean and shiny?
Vatican: Pope John Paul II knew of sex abuse claims
against Cardinal McCarrick
By Clyde Hughes
Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Defrocked Cardinal and Archbishop Theodore McCarrick says Pope John Paul II elevated him in the Catholic Church nearly 20 years ago even though he knew about accusations of sexual misconduct, a Vatican report said Tuesday.
The 461-page report said the former pope elevated McCarrick to cardinal in 2001 despite knowledge of the numerous accusations.
The accusations say McCarrick had sexual contact with at least one priest and multiple children. They also say he shared his bed with young adult men and, later, adult seminarians at a beach house in New Jersey.
McCarrick, 90, who served for years in the 2000s as the church's Archbishop in Washington, D.C., denied the accusations to Pope John Paul II around the turn of the century. He retired as archbishop in 2006 but remained as a cardinal until 2018.
"At the time of McCarrick's appointment, and in part because of the limited nature of the [Vatican's] own prior investigations, [we] had never received a complaint directly from a victim, whether adult or minor, about McCarrick's misconduct," the report states.
"For this reason, McCarrick's supporters could plausibly characterize the allegations against him as 'gossip' or 'rumors.'"
McCarrick continued denying the claims when they continued into the period of church leadership by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, according to the assessment, and Pope Francis didn't receive any documents about accusations involving McCarrick until 2017.
Ped Ring at Beach House
In July, McCarrick and other clerics were sued by a man who accused them of sexual abuse and said they were part of a "sex ring" that operated out of a New Jersey beach house in the early 1980s. The suit said McCarrick and five other officials used the beach house to abuse young boys in 1982 and 1983.
Two months earlier, a series of leaked emails indicated that McCarrick had been disciplined by the church over past accusations of misconduct but he still allowed to travel and work under Pope Benedict and Pope Francis.
Former Vatican diplomat Carlo Maria Vigano said Francis was aware of restrictions placed on McCarrick after he was accused of sleeping with seminarians.
In 2019, McCarrick was found guilty by the Vatican of sexually abusing minors and dismissed from the clergy. At the time, he became the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to be expelled during over long-running accusations of sex abuse within the church.
Diocese of Norwich, Conn says retired judge brought on for sweeping investigation of decades' worth of child sex abuse claims
By NICHOLAS RONDINONE
HARTFORD COURANT |
NOV 09, 2020 AT 5:03 PM
The Diocese of Norwich has announced that a retired Connecticut judge is months into a sweeping, unfettered investigation into sexual abuses suffered by children at the hands of its priests as the Catholic institution continues to rectify its past and protect some of its most vulnerable parishioners.
“It is in a spirit of accountability and transparency that I have invited Judge Riley and the team from Pullman & Comley to conduct this investigation,” Cote said in a statement. “I look forward to their report and I believe that their investigation will help to clarify the thorough work done last year in compiling and publishing the list of clergy with substantive allegations involving sexual abuse of a minor.”
The investigation follows similar efforts that were undertaken in the Archdiocese of Hartford and the Diocese of Bridgeport in recent years. The Diocese of Norwich includes Windham, New London, Tolland and Middlesex counties.
Conversations about a thorough independent investigation began in the spring of 2019, and work began in October of that year, Cote said. His public announcement about the investigation came about nine months after volunteers with both law enforcement and canonical experience helped uncover 43 names of priests associated with the diocese that had “substantive” allegations of child sexual abuse made against them.
At the time of that announcement, Cote said the diocese had paid out nearly $8 million in settlements with victims since 1977. Diocese officials did not say at the time if they would retain an outsider investigator, but the Archdiocese of Hartford and Diocese of Bridgeport had both hired former judges to investigate child sex abuse claims made against priests.
Cotes said more needed to be learned from the initial report on the 43 priests so he met with Riley in April 2019. He said he hopes that Riley and his team will make clear some of the details regarding those 43 priests, though he previously said that none of the 43 are currently active within the diocese.
It is unclear when Riley will conclude his probe, but Cote said he is committed to making the results that look at both the sexual abuses by priests and the failures of church leadership public.
The Norwich Diocese is the smallest in the state with about 76 priests and 228,000 Catholic parishioners. There are 131 priests and about 538,000 Catholics in the Archdiocese of Hartford and 82 priests and 410,000 Catholics in the Bridgeport Diocese.
Several weeks before the Norwich Diocese made public the list of clergy with claims of child sex abuse made against them, Hartford’s Archbishop Leonard Blair provided parishioners with a similar list naming 48 priests that were subject to credible claims of sexual abuse. The Hartford Archdiocese spent more than $50 million settling lawsuits with victims in cases dating back decades.
The Archdiocese of Hartford hired retired Judge Antonio Robaina to conduct a review in early 2019 but no report has been issued.
Former state Superior Court Judge Robert Holzberg, a colleague of Riley’s at Pullman & Comley, conducting an exhaustive investigation into the sexual abuse of children in the Diocese of Bridgeport, issuing a report last fall that more than 280 children suffered abuses at the hands of 71 priests in the diocese dating back to the 1950s.
Holzberg’s scathing report took aim at former Bishops Edward Egan and Walter Curtis for violating state law, destroying documents and ignoring claims made against priests.
As has been seen locally and nationally, many priests faced little consequence for their actions and were often moved to another church or diocese after claims of sexual abuse were made.
For them, their consequences will come later, when they stand before Jesus Christ!
No comments:
Post a Comment