Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says

Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says

By Laurie Goodstein and Sharon Otterman
Aug. 14, 2018

Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and law enforcement not to investigate it, according to a searing report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday.

The report, which covered six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses and found more than 1,000 identifiable victims, is the broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The report said there are likely thousands more victims whose records were lost or who were too afraid to come forward.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-church-sex-abuse-pen...

http://www.france24.com/en/20180815-usa-pennsylvania-priests-molest...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/report-pennsylvania-pr...

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Permalink Reply by Boris on August 17, 2018 at 6:20am

to be clear this only includes a single county in PA, not including Phily, one of the oldest parishes in the country. This a centuries old problem, fricking sad. I had a priest try stuff with me, but I was raised knowing better ! I reported this and the church just transferred him away to another feeding ground.

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Permalink Reply by Parrhesia on August 18, 2018 at 7:47pm

Church officials followed a “playbook for concealing the truth,” the reports states. The patterns were similar enough that FBI analyses of the church’s responses yielded seven rules, basically, an institutional guide to covering up abuse. Here are seven principles the jurors note:

Make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say”rape”; say “inappropriate contact” or “boundary issues.”
Don’t conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel. Instead, assign fellow clergy members to ask inadequate questions and then make credibility determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work.
For an appearance of integrity, send priests for “evaluation” at church-run psychiatric treatment centers. Allow these experts to “diagnose” whether the priest was a pedophile, based largely on the priest’s “self-reports” and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child.
When a priest does have to be removed, don’t say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on “sick leave,” or suffering from”nervous exhaustion.” Or say nothing at all.
Even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses, although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults.
If a predator’s conduct becomes known to the community, don’t remove him from the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser.
Finally, and above all, don’t tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don’t treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, “in house.”

qz.com/1356796/how-the-catholic-church-concealed-priests-sexual-abuse-of-children/