Sexual abuse not just ‘Catholic problem’
“The practice of covering up for predators is not limited to the Catholic Church, or even to religious groups,” said Ms. Sakoda, of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The cases of Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, both serial pedophiles convicted on numerous charges of sexual abuse of children, “are examples of institutional cover-ups outside of faith communities.”
Evangelical Protestants have been swept up in the #MeToo movement. A Memphis megachurch pastor resigned over sexually assaulting a teen girl years ago when hewas her youth minister.
Two of the most venerated leaders in the nation’s largest body, the Southern Baptist Convention, have been felled by scandal. Paige Patterson was fired in May from his Texas seminary presidency for callous treatment of victims of domestic and sexual assault. His longtime ally, lay leader Paul Pressler, also of Texas, faces allegations of sexually molesting teen boys in his youth group.
A sprawling investigation into all kinds of religious and secular youth-serving organizations would be a challenge to conduct.
Attorney Josh Shapiro’s office declined to comment when asked if a broader investigation were merited.
The attorney general would need to spare investigators on a long research project that, like the Catholic investigations, may yield lots of history but not many prosecutions due to the criminal statute of limitations
Further, few religions are as centralized or as fastidious about record keeping as the Catholic Church. Each diocese has archives of personnel files and other records, including candid internal documents that bishops and other administrators never assumed were going to be made public. That’s a potential target-rich environment for investigators.
While some religions have similar hierarchies, many of their records are kept at headquarters in other states, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York and the Mormons in Utah. Others, such as Baptists and the network of independent congregations known as the Churches of Christ, are decentralized and have no uniform protocols for saving records.
That said, victims’ advocates say there is a gold standard for such a sweeping investigation: The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia. The multiyear investigation by this organization, which employed hundreds of staffers, revealed a “national tragedy” of astonishing scope.
It heard stories of abuse from more than 8,000 victims and heard reports of abuse in more than 4,000 youth-serving institutions of all types. Catholic institutions were the most common, but abuse also occurred among Anglicans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Salvation Army, Presbyterians, other Protestants and Orthodox Jews as well as in various youth-detention centers, child-care centers, orphanages and other sites.
“The sexual abuse of children has occurred in almost every type of institution where children reside or attend for educational, recreational, sporting, religious or cultural activities,” the report said.
Worse, the police and other institutions set up to protect children often did not believe their reports of abuse ortake them seriously.
“It is now apparent that across many decades, many of society’s institutions failed our children,” it said. “Our child protection and crimnial and civil justice systems let them down.”
Unlike a grand jury, it was formed to find facts, not press charges.
But advocates want somethingsimilar in this country.
“The Australian commission, to me that’s one of the wonders of the world,” said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest and longtime advocate for victims. Commissions “spared nothing, and they fearlessly examined every denomination.”
The commission found common threads in the enabling of abuse across all kinds of religious traditions. They include: authoritarian control overmembers;anaivebeliefin the power of repentance and forgiveness among serial predators; and a distrust or fear of outside authorities investigating their crimes and spreading scandal.
While hierarchies such as the Catholic bishops have one way of enabling abuse, the lack of any centralization can also breed abuse, said Christa Brown of Tennessee. She led the Southern Baptist branch of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a group originally formed by Catholic victims that later expanded its advocacy to other religous groups.
Ms. Brown, herself the survivor of abuse by a Baptist youth minister, has long called for something akin to a truth-and-reconciliation commission on such abuse.
While Baptists guard their congregational autonomy, they do cooperate in such areas as missions and seminary education, and there’s every reason for Baptists to create an independent entity that can investigate, issue findings and maintain a public list of credibly accused abusers.
Some might be afraid of liability if such a panel accuses someone who hasn’t been found guilty in a court of law, “but the answer to those potential liability concerns cannot rightly be that churches simply stay quiet, let reported abusive pastors move on, and leave kids at risk,” she said.
Robert Hoatson, an advocate for abuse survivors such as himself, hopes there could even be a U.S. investigation similar to Australia’s.
“Child welfare needs a real good examination nationally,” he said. “We have to get out of the notion that children are property. This is the civil rights effort for children.”