Thinking Of You

DUE PROCESS AND CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE

Thomas P. Doyle

April 18, 2004

Bishop Gregory’s oft-quoted words that the sexual abuse scandal was “history” may have been sincere on his part but they were also naive and grossly misleading. The nightmare is far, far from being “history.” The mess left by the institutional church’s succession of bungled efforts to deal with it will take generations to clean up.

The American Bishops’ Conference responded to demands for action with the controversial “Zero Tolerance” policy. For some this was nothing more than a public relations gimmick that would eventually backfire. Victims and survivors have supported the policy because it purported to remove all abusive clerics. The Vatican, many priests’ organizations as well as individual priests have sharply criticized “Zero Tolerance” as an overly emotional response that would plunder the right to due process. And so it has!

The John Jay Survey claimed that nearly 4400 Catholic clerics, including bishops, have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse in the U.S. since 1950. The names were not listed. Some dioceses have revealed the names and others have not. The victims and survivor support groups have urged and even demanded that the names be published. If in fact, all those known by church authorities are proven abusers, then there should be no problem with publishing the names. Some church authorities have balked at publishing the names of deceased clergy abusers. They are dead and cannot defend themselves. If their guilt has been proven there should be no hesitation as long as there is a possibility of living victims. Some Church officials claim they are hiding the names out of respect for the privacy of the victims. Nonsense! How are they compound the victimization by blaming the victims for their own attempts at obstructing justice.

Zero tolerance is realistic only if applied to clerics and religious who are proven sex abusers. Herein lies the deceptive myth that has fueled both support and criticism. The application of Zero Tolerance in many dioceses has swept up the accused, the proven, the convicted and even the innocent. In some dioceses a simple anonymous accusation brings immediate suspension or administrative leave followed by months or even years of limbo while the church investigates. These days accused clerics are instantaneously assumed to be guilty. The traditional common law adage is reversed: guilty until proven guiltier. In the few cases when internal investigations have exonerated accused clerics, serious doubts remain because the facts of the accusation and the details of the investigation are not released. The public are expected to believe the church officials: “We have investigated and found no cause. Trust us!” Trust in the ecclesiastical system is long gone. The accused would be better served by an openness that would remove lingering questions and the accusers would be relieved if they had actually been an integral part of the investigative process. This is not the way it works however.

There are two fundamental fallacies with the bishops’ Zero Tolerance approach. The first is that there is no clarity as to whom it applies and the second is the imprecise notion of “sexual abuse.” The present state of affairs will only get worse as long as the institutional church continues to insist that it’s leaders alone have the authority to define sexual abuse and to conduct internal investigations. It is ironic that the very authorities who masterminded the cover-up for decades and refused to admit that sexual abuse is gravely harmful are the same ones who now claim authority for defining and investigating allegations.

Traditionally any country that suspends civil rights by claiming that this is necessary for a greater good, ends up with a social and legal disaster. Objective and effective due process is essential for the victims and the accused. If the institutional church is allowed to manipulate due process for public relations purposes, then the credibility of the victims will suffer. The abused victims and survivors will lose all hope of finding justice if there are no just procedures. They could end up being characterized as blood thirsty, irrational and mindlessly vindictive. They are angry and rightly so and the continued bungling by the ecclesiastical bureaucracy is making sure that anger does not abate.

By focusing their energies on dispatching every cleric ever accused, the hierarchy is actually manipulating and re-victimizing the victims in a subtle and highly damaging way. In this frenzy, which looks more like a knee-jerk reaction to placate angry demands for action rather than more useless rhetoric, the bishops seem to have intentionally overlooked two real issues: first, sexual abuse by clerics is not limited to children and young adolescents. It includes vulnerable adults, both women and men. Second, there are bishops among the known abusers yet they have been exempted from the canonical process and instead face the meaningless alternative of “fraternal correction.”

Though it is true that only the Holy See is competent to prosecute bishops, the Episcopal Conference could have requested Vatican approval for an investigative process for accused bishop-perpetrators. On the other hand, the skepticism that the Vatican will ever take honest action against bishops who have either abused themselves or covered for abusers is real. The most glaring example of the Vatican’s warped idea of due process is the abrupt short-circuiting of the investigation of Father Marcial Maciel-Degollado, notorious leader of the Legionaries of Christ. The small group of credible adult accusers sought to avoid the civil process and prosecute their claims through the canonical courts. Their efforts were met with cover-up and manipulation of the process at the top...in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. So much for Vatican justice! Read Berry and Renner, Vows of Silence for an eye-opening and adrenalin pumping account of the devious machinations of Maciel and his band of the hyper-orthodox.

The John Jay Survey produced discounted numbers but no names. Some dioceses have revealed the identities of the perpetrators and others have not. If mistakes are made and erroneously accused clerics are named it is not the fault of the survivors or survivors’ support groups like SNAP. The responsibility lies squarely in the bishops’ laps. By continuing the charade of internal investigations they also continue the high probability of mistakes and more cover-up. If accusations are properly and thoroughly investigated by people competent to perform this task, i.e., law enforcement agencies, then there should be no problem with publication of names. The secular society publishes the names of known criminals. The church cannot claim exemption from civil laws nor can it shirk responsibility to the secular community. A sexual offender who happens to be a cleric is just as dangerous as one who is not.

The concern about due process and injustices to priests would receive a much more sympathetic response from survivors and their supporters had there been a history of at least concern to say nothing of outrage expressed over the plight of the abused. The contemporary scandal came to light in 1984 yet it took the Pope until m1993 to make a public statement. No priests’ group in the US, and this includes priests’ senates, the NFPC and any other group, has ever made a public statement of support and sympathy for victims or expressed outrage that their rights had been trampled. Is the present concern another symptom of clericalist imbalance? I suspect so. Yet the fact remains that the heat on the priests is promoting many to overcome their fear of retaliation by the bishops. They are slowly but surely coming forward to add their voices to the chorus demanding that hypocrisy end, the injustices be righted and the Church leaders abandon their myopic obsession with their image and power and expend their energies at making the Church actually look like what it is supposed to be, the People of God.

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