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What Archbishop O’Malley must do
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NEARLY TWO AND A HALF years, one change in the law, one investigation by the attorney general, and a new archbishop later, we have yet to come to grips with the magnitude of the Catholic Church’s clergy-sex-abuse scandal. Nor can any of us be confident that the Church is dealing with the issue in such a way that nothing like it will ever happen again. This past Wednesday, Sean Patrick O’Malley was installed as the archbishop of the Boston archdiocese, just the sixth man ever to hold the post. Although he comes to his new job with an impressive reputation — he helped rebuild the Fall River diocese in the wake of the Father James Porter sex scandal and trial — it’s also quite clear that O’Malley is in complete lock step with the conservative beliefs of his predecessor and the pope; otherwise, he would not have been appointed. Nevertheless, O’Malley has a formidable task ahead of him. Last week, after 18 months of investigation, Attorney General Tom Reilly released a comprehensive report on the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Boston archdiocese. He describes the scope of the scandal — which affected 789 children in 45 cities and towns since 1940 — as "one of the greatest tragedies to befall children in this Commonwealth." Most disturbing, however, is Reilly’s conclusion that the "Archdiocese has yet to demonstrate an appropriate sense of urgency for attacking the problem of child sexual abuse or for changing its culture to remove the risk to children." We shouldn’t be surprised. This is the institution, after all, that engaged in the sickening practice of enabling and protecting serial rapists — the clergy perpetrators — and putting children at risk of serious attack. And it did so routinely (see "Cardinal Law, the Church, and Pedophilia," News and Features, March 23, 2001). Fortunately, one thing that has changed since the scandal became public is the awareness that new laws must be enacted to prosecute rapists and those who cover up their crimes. Last year, the state legislature finally added clergy to the list of mandated reporters of suspected child abuse, which already included teachers, therapists, doctors, and other professionals who come into regular contact with children. For years, the Catholic Church in Boston had successfully lobbied against the inclusion of clergy on this list. (It was a move that paid off for the Church and its leadership when Reilly concluded that it would not be possible to indict Bernard Cardinal Law, Bishop Thomas Daily, Bishop Robert Banks, Bishop Alfred Hughes, and others who covered up for pedophile priests, given that their actions violated no state laws. Clergy-sex-abuse victims’ advocates have since called on US Attorney Michael Sullivan to investigate the actions of Law and his subordinates under criminal conspiracy laws or the RICO Act.) Meanwhile, the legislature also passed a law making it a crime to recklessly endanger children, as Law, Daily, Banks, Hughes, and others most certainly did. But there’s much more that can be done to protect the Commonwealth’s children and give prosecutors the tools they need to go after priests who abuse children in the future — as well as clerical supervisors, should they choose to cover up for abusive clergymen. Reilly has suggested amending the mandated-reporting law so that violators can be fined up to $25,000 or face up to two and a half years in prison. Currently, violators of the law face fines of just $1000. Governor Mitt Romney, who expressed frustration that no additional criminal complaints will be brought against anyone in the archdiocese based on the complaints of abuse that have already been brought forward, has directed his chief legal counsel, Dan Winslow, to work with Reilly’s office to come up with additional ways of strengthening existing law. But State Senator Cheryl Jacques of Needham already has several ideas. She’d like to see the mandated-reporter law further amended so that suspected crimes of child abuse must be reported to local police as well as to the Department of Social Services. She has also proposed, along with State Representatives Ruth Balser of Newton and Gale Candaras of Springfield and Wilbraham, a bill of rights for victims of rape and sexual assault. The key provision of the bill would abolish the statute of limitations for the criminal prosecution of rape or sexual assault of children. A version of the law was passed by the state Senate last year, though the House of Representatives, under Speaker Tom Finneran’s leadership, for reasons that are unclear, failed to take any action on the bill. The coming debate over new laws ensuring that something like the Boston archdiocese’s massive failure to protect children can never happen again is likely to turn on whether the statute of limitations for prosecuting the sexual assault of children should be abolished. Reilly is against its elimination. Romney spokeswoman Nicole St. Peter says the governor has not made a decision on the issue yet. But clergy-sex-abuse victims’ advocates favor the move. (The only other crime in the Commonwealth not subject to a statute of limitations for prosecution is murder.) Jacques points out that the successful prosecution of Porter was built on a technicality: a judge ruled that when Porter moved out of state, the clock on the statute of limitations stopped ticking. Otherwise, Porter would have been off the hook. "I don’t hear anybody saying that they think that it’s a bad thing that those cases were able to go forward," says Jacques. "What an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of world we live in to say that a predator who happens to go out of state can be prosecuted but one who stays in state, we have to say to the victims, ‘Sorry, the statute of limitations has run out.’ That makes absolutely no sense to me." Nor to us. There should be no statute of limitations for the criminal prosecution of sick predators like John Geoghan, Paul Mahan, Bernie Lane, Melvin Surrette, George Berthold, Paul Shanley, and the 244 other priests and Church workers accused of sexually assaulting children. If O’Malley really wants to show that he understands the magnitude of the Church’s failure to protect its children, and that the Church has changed for real, he will lead the charge to strengthen existing laws and to introduce new ones that will protect children now and into the future. What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com
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