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http://ncronline.org/blogs/examining-crisis/time-now-childhood-sexual-abuse-and-statutes-limitation
The time is now: childhood sexual abuse and statutes of limitation
By Maureen Paul Turlish
December 09, 2011
Both Pennsylvania and New York will have an uphill battle to get any legislation dealing with the sexual abuse of children discussed, let alone signed into law, regardless of what has been happening lately at Penn State, Syracuse or any other educational, religious, public or private institution.
This is especially true if Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput and New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan have anything to do with it.
Both churchmen, along with their respective state Catholic conferences, have drawn lines in the sand in their continued attempts to avoid the accountability and transparency the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed to in 2002 to say nothing of the right everyone has to access justice through this country’s judicial process.
Especially significant are the remarks Dolan made to reporters during the November meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore. Dolan, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, compared the widening sex abuse scandal at Penn State University to the decades-long crisis in the Roman Catholic Church as if the latter were a thing of the past.
Actually, the archbishop misspoke when he said the present Penn State sexual abuse scandal “over a former football coach accused of sexually abusing young boys reopens a wound for the U.S. Roman Catholic Church.”
The “wound” Dolan refers to never closed. It is a “wound” that has continued to fester since the Archdiocese of Boston imploded in 2002, revealing a massive cover-up by the hierarchy.
It is an open, festering wound in places like the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, where the criminal trial of Msgr. William Lynn and four others begins in March 2012.
It festers, too, in Missouri, where Bishop Robert Finn has been criminally charged for not reporting the pornography found on a priest’s computer as required by law. It festers in New York, where individuals like State Assemblywoman Marge Markey continue to press for legislation that gives some recourse to the justice that has long been denied to all older victims of childhood sexual abuse.
Even though investigators said charges against Syracuse University Coach Bernie Fine were credible, he could not be charged because of arbitrary and discriminatory statutes of limitation.
Why does this “wound” remain open 10 years after the U.S. bishops mandated accountability and transparency?
Well, for one thing, the bishops of the United States have never really admitted, individually or collectively, to their part in covering up for clergymen known to have sexually exploited children, young people and vulnerable adults while failing miserably to protect the most precious of their charges — the children.
Yes, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church has “a long way to go,” to use Dolan’s words, in making up for the egregious crimes and mortal sins that have been committed against children, but “failures” and “mistakes” are words that do not begin to describe the agony thousands of children were left to go through while the few adults who dared to confront pastors or bishops over the behavior of rogue priests were bullied, harassed and intimidated into silence, often with threats of eternal damnation and, of course, counter-suits.
These were crimes against the very humanity of children for whom there was no recourse to justice in the majority of cases because of the arbitrary, discriminatory and grossly inadequate statutes of limitation that exist in most states.
Dolan offered to work with “Penn State administrators on a national education campaign to stop abuse.”
Does Dolan actually believe that the Roman Catholic Church has set some kind of a gold standard, either in regard to confronting the incidence of sexual abuse by clerics or in taking responsibility for the orchestrated cover-up by church leadership that followed?
It has not.
In a recent conversation with Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today, Dolan offered to share the supposed wealth of experience the bishops have in successfully dealing with the church’s problems.
What chutzpah.
On Monday, Pennsylvania state Representative Dennis O’Brien convened an informational meeting of the House Children and Youth Committee, of which he is the majority chair. Along with Rep. Louise Bishop, who made public her own sexual abuse some weeks ago, O’Brien heard from eight individuals, including victims, a deceased victim’s parent, advocates, the former deputy district attorney from Philadelphia who is now a senior prosecutor in Lehigh County and a constitutional lawyer and author from New York.
O’Brien made known his intentions to introduce a package of five bills to protect children — House Bills 2046 through 2050 — some sections of which repeat portions of House Bills 832 and 878, which were introduced March 1, before revelations of sexual abuse at Penn State became public.
What the scandals at Penn State, Syracuse and elsewhere make clear is that while the cover-up of sexual abuse by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church was, and to a great extent continues to be, widespread, systemic and endemic, the sexual abuse and exploitation of children is not peculiar to this one organization.
That having been said, the question remains, How can the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church ethically or morally justify its opposition to legislation that would better protect all children while holding all sexual predators and their enablers accountable, regardless of religious affiliation?
Through its bishops and state Catholic conferences, the Roman Catholic Church is the most powerful institution opposing better child protection legislation in this country, bar none.
Dolan has been very vocal in his opposition to any proposed legislation in the state of New York that has sought to hold either sexual predators or enablers accountable.
In seeking to shield the Roman Catholic Church from the accountability and transparency it was forced to promise in 2002, such opposition now gives more protection to sexual predators — whether they are parents, ministers, priests, imams, rabbis, doctors, teachers or coaches at universities like Syracuse or Penn State — than to the victims themselves.
In opposing legislative reform in New York, Dolan is not unlike Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput in Pennsylvania, who has united with the Commonwealth’s bishops and the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference in opposing any legislation that would enable victim/survivors of childhood sexual abuse to access justice, no matter when they were sexually exploited or by whom.
Archbishops Dolan and Chaput, along with most of their fellow bishops, haven’t a clue as to the suffering that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church’s has caused and continues to inflict on sexual abuse victims because they have never been truly accountable or transparent.
No one in the Catholic community has suffered more than the innocent children whose minds, hearts and souls were torn asunder by those who stood in the place of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Baltimore’s former archbishop, Cardinal William Keeler, correctly described such horrific sexual abuse by a trusted minister of God when he used the term “soul murder,” for it truly is that.
Dolan, as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, should be at the head of the parade in advocating for the removal of all criminal and civil statutes of limitation in regard to the sexual abuse of children, but he is not heading up that parade and neither is Chaput.
Such behavior can only signal an insidious moral and ethical bankruptcy that should be repugnant to all.
[Maureen Paul Turlish is a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, an educator and an advocate for legislative reform. She is a founding member of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition and a member of the Justice 4 PA Kids Coalition.]
A Nun Comments on Archbishop Dolan’s Remarks
Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is wrong when he comments that the present Penn State scandal “over a former football coach accused of sexually abusing young boys ‘reopens a wound’ for the U.S. Roman Catholic Church.”
The “wound” Archbishop Dolan refers to has never closed. It is a “wound” that has continued to fester since the Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts imploded in 2002.
Why?
Well for one thing the bishops of the United States have never really admitted, individually or collectively, to their part in covering up for clergymen known to be sexual predators of children and young people.
Yes, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church has “a long way to go,” in making up for the egregious crimes that have been committed against children. “Failures” and “mistakes” are words that hardly begin to describe the agony thousands of children were left to go through while the few adults who dared to confront pastors or bishops over the behavior of rogue priests were bullied, harassed and intimidated into silence, often with threats of eternal damnation.
They were crimes and they were crimes against the very humanity of these innocent children.
Archbishop Dolan, you offered to work with “Penn State administrators on a national education campaign to stop abuse.”
Does your offer extend to working with advocacy groups in Pennsylvania whose goal is legislative reform? If it does there are several groups that were formed in response to the 2011 grand jury investigation on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia who are now working for reform in Pennsylvania.
Sadly though, at this very moment, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput, along with the bishops of Pennsylvania and the PA Catholic Conference are united in vicious opposition to any proposed legislation that would better protect children.
How do you explain that?
No, Archbishop Dolan, I’m afraid that neither you nor most of your fellow bishops has a clue as to the suffering that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church’s has caused and continues to inflict because it has never been truly accountable or transparent.
No one in the Catholic community has suffered more than the innocent children whose minds, hearts and souls were torn asunder by those who stood in the place of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Baltimore’s former archbishop, Cardinal William Keeler correctly described such horrific sexual abuse by a trusted minister of God when he used the term “soul murder” for it truly is that.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan should be at the head of the parade in supporting the removal of all criminal and civil statutes of limitation in regard to the sexual abuse of children.
Anything less should be morally repugnant to all.
—Sister Maureen Paul Turlish SNDdeN
Advocate for Victims & Legislative Reform
maturlishmdsnd@yahoo.com
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A church’s chance for redemption
By Maureen Paul Turlish February 17, 2011Why isn’t the Catholic hierarchy actively supporting legislation to protect Pennsylvania children?
href=”http://Avoiding liability for sexual abuse on the grounds that the statute of limitations has expired is hardly a moral victory, but it’s exactly what the church has done in Philadelphia and throughout Pennsylvania in recent years. Legislation to lift civil and criminal statutes of limitations would give victims of childhood sexual abuse the opportunity at long last to have their cases heard in court.
Most of the individuals mentioned in a 2005 grand-jury report on sexual abuse in the church, released under former District Attorney Lynne Abraham, could not be criminally or civilly prosecuted for their alleged crimes. Why? Because their enablers did not have the integrity to call the police, and the statute of limitations covering their alleged crimes ran out. In fact, the archdiocese issued a lengthy response to the report that was geared toward damage control and protecting the church at the expense of children.
This does not appear to be the case with the latest grand-jury report. So far, the church has made no orchestrated public attempt to discredit this investigation or the current district attorney, Seth Williams.
This grand jury indicted three priests and a lay teacher on charges of sexual abuse of boys, and one church official – Msgr. William Lynn, who was formerly responsible for priest assignments – was charged with reckless endangerment of those youngsters. Not only has this never happened in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia; it appears not to have happened anywhere in the United States, and it has sent shock waves through the country’s largest religious denomination.
As a community of believers, we say we are concerned about the rights of the downtrodden. But many of us have ignored the victims of child sexual abuse who are right in front of us. Instead, we talk about those who must be in it for the money and make inflammatory statements about anti-Catholic bias – none of which does much to address the problem.
Real accountability requires that all arbitrary statutes of limitations on sexual abuse of children, criminal and civil, be repealed, and that a window of at least two years be provided to allow previously barred cases to be brought forward.
Justice, like charity, should begin at home, and our church should be leading the push for legislative reforms. Jesus said, “The truth shall set you free,” but when will the truth of these allegations be known? If the leadership of the archdiocese means what it’s been saying since 2005, it will take the lead in abolishing the statute of limitations.
State Rep. Michael P. McGeehan (D., Phila.) has said he intends to introduce legislation in Harrisburg this week “that will once and for all afford all victims of childhood sexual abuse the ability to seek justice.” I encourage other legislators to join him, and I expect the archdiocese to actively support his bill. The church leadership failed its most vulnerable charges, but now it has an opportunity for redemption.
Maureen Paul Turlish is a sister of Notre Dame de Namur and a member of the Delaware Child Victims Voice Coalition and the Greater Philadelphia Voice of the Faithful. She can be reached at maturlishmdsnd@yahoo.com.
PUBLIC APOLOGIES FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?
Sister Maureen Turlish
In the U.S. publication, the National Catholic Reporter, Dominican priest, the Rev. Thomas Doyle has this to say in the article, ”Irish abuse report demands decisive action,” (05/21/09):
“The report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is not unique though it may well be the most shocking example of the reality of such a culture of evil. In the past two decades over two dozen reports have described physical and sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults by Catholic clergy and religious.” (1)
Church authorities and individual religious communities of men and women are tripping over each other saying how sorry they are that this tragedy happened. A lot more than public apologies from cardinals, bishops, religious superiors and government officials are necessary here.
The government of Ireland made a deal with the Devil in agreeing not to prosecute or name any of the individuals, living or dead, who were party to the widespread torture and abuse of children as has been reported in the recently released Ryan Report.
The Holy See itself along with the bishops and superiors of every religious order implicated in this tragedy like the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity and the individual perpetrators, living or dead, who were ever convicted, credibly accused or known by church authorites to have raped, sodomized, tortured and abused the children in their care should be brought before the world court.
The two nuns who brokered the arrangement with the Irish government to limit the institutional Roman Catholic Church’s accountability and transparency should be ashamed of themselves, I know I am.
They are Sisters Elizabeth Maxwell who was then the secretary general of the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI) and currently heads the northern province of the Presentation Sisters, and Helena O’Donoghue the leader of the Sisters of Mercy, south central province. Sadly, they personify the worst of the church’s clericalism and patriarchial system, just in the female variation.
These are nothing less than crimes against humanity and they should be prosecuted as such.
The Holy See is a signatory to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child even though it has never submitted one of the required compliance reports and I suspect that Ireland is a signatory to that document as well.
Every single God given right has been denied these children and they are deserving of some justice. They should get it from the world court and the sooner the better.
Only now are we finding out that the communities involved have met with governmental officials and the Conference of Religious and have said they “will not reopen discussions on the child abuse compensation deal agreed with the Government,” while government officials are set to destroy all the evidence and testimony on which the Ryan Report was based. (2)
Recent comments by the new Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, have been less than helpful. “Courage” is not a word that comes immediately to mind when thinking of the Irish religious communities who were party to this debacle and Nichols was unwise to use it.
Neither Ireland’s Cardinal Sean Brady or Archbishop Diamuid Martin seem to be able to exert any control over the 18 religious communities involved so it falls to the Holy See and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life to step in.
It is unbelievable that the government of Ireland cannot find the authority to void the damming agreement that was made with these religious communities in 2002.
That these communities in a statement released by the the Conference of the Religious in Ireland (Cori) refuse to revisit this agreement while professing concern for the victims involved is disingenuous as well as insulting to those of us who are members of religious communites around the world. (3)
I suggest that Ireland’s Cardinal Sean Brady and Archbishop Diamuid Martin meet with Pope Benedict XVI as soon as possible and impress upon him the necessity of action.
As Tom Doyle puts it, “there is something radically wrong with the institutional Catholic Church. This is painfully obvious because it allows systemic abuse and radical dishonesty to coexist with its self-proclaimed identity as the Kingdom of God on earth.”
Anything less would amount to a sin against the Holy Spirit. /mpt
(1) http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/irish-abuse-report-demands-decisive-action
(2) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0525/breaking14.html?via=mr
(3) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0525/breaking64.htm
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REPORT BY IRELAND’S COMMISSION TO INQUIRE INTO CHILD ABUSE
Sister Maureen Turlish
I am thoroughly saddened, disgusted and angered at yet another sweeping indictment of individuals and church authorities including the leadership of both male and female religious communities.
In 2004 it was the “report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
Today it is the commission set up by the Irish government and headed by High Court Justice Sean Ryan that has released the 2,600-page report, which capped a nine-year investigation.
It reinforces the conclusions many have come to in the United States especially since 2002; that the problems of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church have been both systemic and endemic over decades and generations in countries around the world.
It is not an American problem as some cardinals and highly placed Vatican officials argued a few years back. Neither is it caused by the presence of homosexually orientated men in the priesthood.
It is not a conspiracy by the newspapers in the United States or by anybody to bankrupt the institutional church.
It is not the “Know Nothings” of an earlier era in the United States.
It comes from within the institution not from the outside. The institution, the Roman Catholic Church as we know it, has done it to itself.
Clericalism is the all encompassing problem in the church today, that widespread abuse of authority, that lack of accountability and transparency which the United States bishops promised in 2002 but which they have been short on delivering since and should have been practicing all along the line anyway.
The all encompassing mantra that allowed, permitted and enabled this horror to happen, was and is the widespread abuse of power and authority in the Roman Catholic Church starting at the highest levels. It can be see in the reports and documents coming out of the Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts in 2002, in dioceses in California like the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and in investigations and reports like the Grand Jury Report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 2005.
This is why in Delaware we removed all statutes of limitation regarding the sexual abuse of children with the signing of the 2007 Child Victims Law which includes a two year civil window for bringing forward previously time barred cases of sexual abuse by anyone, if it happened in Delaware.
New Yorkers of all religious stripes and none are well advised to support the Markey/Duane bill on the sexual abuse of children. It is unconscionable for the Archdiocese of New York and the New York Catholic Conference to be opposing accountability and transparency in regard to childhood sexual abuse.
The Irish Report was done by governmental authorities unlike the 2004 report in the United States which was commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and for that reason it’s figures especially should be considered suspect.
It is unconscionable that the Irish government actually made a deal with the institutional church to allow no prosecutions for these heinous crimes against humanity. It is equally despicable that the religious order known as the Christian Brothers brought suit and barred the release of any names of any of these known sexually predatory priests to the public.
It is immaterial whether they are living or dead. If the Christian Brothers religious community knew them to be credibly accused, if they had records in church files of these individuals molesting others over the years they should have made these names public for the physical, spiritual and psychological well being of those who were abused, raped, sodomized, etc.
How could they not think of the children before all else?
How could the institutional Roman Catholic Church think of the children before all else?
Sodom and Gomorrah suggest anything?
These crimes against children are in direct violation of and in contradiction to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child to which the Holy See was an original signatory, notwithstanding the fact that no periodic compliance reports have ever been submitted by the Holy See.
Might this suggest a course of action?
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victms’ Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
Sister Maureen Turlish is a member of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition. In addition, she is a Delaware educator and victims’ advocate who testified before the Delaware Senate and House Judiciary Committees in support of Delaware’s 2007 Child Victims Law.
