The Catholic Priest Fiasco (And How It Got This Far)

How could the Catholic Church let this get so far without being criminally sanctioned?

I’ve been skirting around writing on the subject of predatory priests for two reasons.  First, it cuts close to home; next, there’s been new developments weekly.

I finally forced myself to read a portion of the 1,356-page report on church sex abuse issued following a grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania. It reads like a novel, backed by parish documents, maps, letters to the Vatican, and an appropriate tone of outrage by the author(s).  How could the Catholic Church let this get so far without being criminally sanctioned?

I grew up Catholic.  I went to Catholic school through 8th grade and covered the Vatican from Rome as a reporter in the 1980s.  (That’s when my faith in the church as an institution first started to wane.)

As children we were taught that priests were Jesus Christ on earth.  When one appeared in the doorway of a classroom, we’d immediately rise as if visited by a celebrity or a saint and chant in unison, “Good morning, Father.”   So excited was the nun teaching the class, her eyes shimmered with awe.  One of us would ask the father to bless the class before he left.  With deep piety, he’d make an aerial sign of the cross, call us all his “children,” and leave as silently as he appeared.

Friends of mine who went on to all-boy Catholic high schools told me it was common to see a priest or two in the locker room after sporting events when the team showered up.  It never got reported.  It’s just what certain priests did — show up for no reason when boys were naked.

The details of the abuse in the recently released report expose a sinister intent.  According to the grand jury findings, the priests cultivated victims and made reference to god to justify their actions.  Diocesan leaders persuaded parents not to go to law enforcement because “it would be harmful and certainly unnecessary.”  Victims signed non-disclosure settlements prohibiting them from revealing anything about the underlying offenses and were paid off for their silence.  Often the offending priests were sent for “psychological therapy” (a weekend away), then returned to their parish or another.

The report is chock full of examples of abuse and cover-ups.  Grand jurors reviewed half a million pages of diocesan documents involving “credible allegations against 300 predator priests and over 1,000 child victims.”

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The intro to the report is chilling enough:

We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.

I intend to write about this story in more than one column.  It deserves it.  I have only thus far read one-tenth of what the grand jury wrote, and it disgusts me.  Some examples include camping trips with skinny dipping and invitations to the priest’s tent where boys were fondled and encouraging pre-teens boys to get in a circle, take their clothes off, and then “get hard” in order to “check for cancer.”

Thankfully, at least a dozen state attorneys general have opened investigations into church practices.  Last week, the Department of Justice sent a sweeping request to all U.S. Catholic bishops demanding that documents relating to child sex abuse not be destroyed or altered.

The details (names, dates, and abuses) from Pennsylvania are just the tip of the iceberg.

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Most of these events took place in the 70s and 80s when priests were considered too holy to commit the acts of which they’ve been accused.  Parishioners are now wiser and camping trips alone with priests don’t happen anymore. Meanwhile the church has, deservedly, taken a hard punch from the revelations and is struggling to figure out how best to address the backlash.

Pope Francis has called a meeting of Catholic bishops from around the world for February to discuss child sex abuse and next steps.

They might take some advice from a victim’s father who wrote then-Bishop Trautman from Erie, PA, in the 1980s with these demands:

  • That the Church stop aiding and abetting predatory priests.
  • That the Church ensure collections are not used to compensate predator priests.
  • That the names of pedophile priests be shared and published if they are moved to other locations or even if they leave the priesthood.
  • That a policy is established to ensure that offending priests are reported to law enforcement.

Had these measures been in effect when dioceses first learned of priests’ predatory sexual behavior, it might have saved other children from being victimized as priests were moved from parish to parish or took lay jobs involving youth.

Not all priests are bad, I get that.  But the systematic concealing of this blight by the Catholic Church is shameful and the extent of it needs to be exposed.

I picked up a new criminal case this week where my client is accused of sexual assault against an eight-year-old.  He confessed and will get eight years in jail, plus a lifetime of compelled registration with his local police department, living restrictions (not near schools or day cares), and will be publicly listed as a sexual predator.  If he were a priest in the 80s, he would have gone unscathed.


Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.