Forgive me Father, for I am not impressed

On Sunday, after great fanfare heralding the Catholic church’s sex abuse summit in the Vatican, the pope made the supposedly momentous declaration that “The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case (of abuse by a priest).”

The first problem with the underwhelming-ness of this statement is that there is no process in place or even proposed to ensure the truth of this statement. Far from it — there is opposition to the mandatory reporting of abuse, leaving decisions about reporting, investigating, disciplining clergy and protecting victims entirely to the clergy. The recent grand jury report on sex abuse by priests in Pennsylvania describes the church’s tactics for suppressing reports as “…a playbook for concealing the truth.”

Neither the Catholic nor the Anglican church can apparently accept the mountain of evidence showing that they cannot be relied upon to report sex abuse to law enforcement or public agencies. Instead, as the grand jury report described it, they have over many decades systematically suppressed and discredited complaints. The Independent Inquiry into Institutionalized Child Sex Abuse in the UK, where I testified last year, has heard a similar litany of deliberate, established tactics to sweep away allegations of abuse (in the case of one Anglican diocese, into the so-called “Naughty Boys filing cabinet”).

The pope used much of his closing speech at the summit to point out that sexual abuse takes place outside the Catholic church also. You don’t say? How is this remotely relevant?

But not only is this completely irrelevant to the culpability of the Catholic church, but none of those other sources — the guy with child porn on his computer, the workplace sexual predator, the athletics coach preying on young girls and boys — claims the unique moral authority that the Catholic church does. Or relies on this moral authority to exercise power over millions of people.

In more evidence of superficiality and public relations window-dressing, the summit heard from five victims of clerical abuse, carefully selected over the wishes of survivor groups (who preferred survivors who were willing for their names and their cases to be public) because they were happy to remain anonymous. As a result, their disclosures were in private and there is no information whatsoever available regarding what the church has done or will do to address their victimization and hold their abusers accountable.

Finally, I cannot be the only person incensed by the constant repetition in the pope’s speech of references to “innocent children”. Of course child victims are innocent and the sexual abuse of children by priests widespread and utterly grotesque. But again this is a packaged acknowledgement for the benefit of media. Many young adults (myself including) and adults (including of course many nuns) have also been sexually abused, raped and sexually exploited by members of the clergy who stand in a position of authority and power over them. We might not be “innocent children” but the church has violated us also.

Please, don’t be impressed that the Catholic church has “turned a corner”. None of the churches will have really faced their responsibility for ruining the lives of thousands of members of their communities until they accept mandatory reporting and oversight, with no exceptions for churches.

In the UK, there is, incredibly, currently no legislated mandatory reporting of child abuse by anyone, whether a priest or a social worker or teacher; this has become a central question in the ongoing Independent Inquiry into Institutionalized Child Sex Abuse. In 48 of the US states that mandate teachers, counsellors, health care workers, social workers and related professionals to report, clergy are exempt. A few states are now considering removing that exemption, however it would remain in place for confessions (known as “priest-penitent privilege”). In Canada, some provinces have somewhat better laws on reporting; for example in Ontario, clergy are not exempted although volunteers working with children, and lawyers (operating under lawyer/client privilege) are.

Isn’t mandatory reporting — no exemptions, not for clergy, not for volunteers, not for lawyers and not even for the confessional — what any civilized society that cares about protecting people from abuse would require? Try telling that to the Catholic church as it pats itself on the back after its sex abuse summit.