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Archives > Volume 9 Issue 3 - January 19, 2011 AP: Vatican Told Irish Bishops Not to Report Abuse...A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police - a disclosure that victims groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of cover-up. AP story from CBS News here 
The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.
The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities. Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature." Storero wrote that canon law - which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church - "must be meticulously followed." He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the "highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome. Catholic officials in Ireland and the Vatican declined AP requests to comment on the letter, which RTE said it received from an Irish bishop. Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the 1997 letter should demonstrate, once and for all, that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but ordered by them. "The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere," said Colm O'Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International. Joelle Casteix, a director of U.S. advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, described the letter as "the smoking gun we've been looking for." Casteix said it was certain to be cited by victims' lawyers seeking to pin responsibility directly on the Vatican rather than local dioceses. She said investigators long have sought such a document showing Vatican pressure on a group of bishops "thwarting any kind of justice for victims." "We now have evidence that the Vatican deliberately intervened to order bishops not to turn pedophile priests over to law enforcement," she said. "And for civil lawsuits, this letter shows what victims have been saying for dozens and dozens of years: What happened to them involved a concerted cover-up that went all the way to the top." To this day, the Vatican has not endorsed any of the Irish church's three major policy documents since 1996 on safeguarding children from clerical abuse. Irish taxpayers, rather than the church, have paid most of the euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) to more than 14,000 abuse claimants dating back to the 1940s. For more information on clergy abuse, visit eGuide/clergyabuse. In other news... 
NFL Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor avoided jail by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges stemming from a May arrest on rape and prostitution charges. Yahoo Sports story here The former New York Giants great will serve six years probation as part of the agreement, which saw him plead guilty to sexual misconduct and patronizing a prostitute. He will have to register as a sex offender. In court, Taylor admitted to having sex with a prostitute who ended up being a 16-year-old runaway. "She told me she was 19," he said. Ignorance of a victim's age isn't a defense in a third-degree rape case. For more on this subject visit eGuide/statrape. For more on this story see vol8_iss33.
Two Roswell, NM third-graders are being punished after deputies said the pair was caught smoking marijuana at school. KOAT story here Chaves County deputies said they've never heard of anything like this before. BBC reports that child sex trafficking is a growing concern in the UK. BBC story here Barnado's, a UK children's charity, says children as young as 10 are being trafficked in the UK. The charity says it is working with more than 1,000 abused children who are moved around British towns and cities. 
Facebook has joined the volunteer network of organizations that distribute Amber alerts, urgent all-points bulletins issued by law enforcement in serious cases of child abduction.
NY Times story here The announcement came on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, for whom the alert program is named. Ms. Hagerman was plucked by a man from her bicycle, put into a pickup truck and later killed, in a case that has never been solved. Facebook said it created 53 Amber Alert pages, one for each state, Puerto Rico, United States Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. To receive alerts, Facebook users can visit the page for their state and click the "Like" button at the top. Alerts will appear in their news feeds, and they will be able to share them with friends. Facebook also said it would donate advertising to promote the new pages. The Amber Alert Program was created in 2003 to speed news of endangered missing children in order to urgently enlist communities in their rescue. Some 800,000 children are reported missing every year. The Amber Alert program has, to date, been credited with the safe recovery of 525 children across the United States.
A former St. Louis priest and teacher who was ordered removed from the priesthood by the Vatican after being accused of sexually abusing as many as 30 teenagers in Bangladesh is taking his accuser to court. St. Louis Post-Dispatch story here The priest, the Rev. William Christensen, has appealed the Vatican ruling, and has filed a lawsuit in Bangladesh seeking $1.4 million in damages against his accuser, a former nun, Rosaline Costa. *for access to member only sites like the New York Times, use the ID "JohnDoeID" and the password "whatever". On sites asking for an email address, feel free to use "info@childprotectionprogram.org" |
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