Put a Spotlight on All Archives of Abuse

AMERICA

In All Things

Kevin Clarke | Mar 3 2016 - 3:30pm | 3 comments

David Ridsdale, who was sexually abused by his uncle, Father Gerald Ridsdale, stands next to fellow sexual abuse survivors Andrew Collins, Phil Nagle and others as he speaks with media in front of the Hotel Quirinale in Rome March 3. Ause survivors met with Australian Cardinal George Pell after his testimony via video link from the hotel to Australia's Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

It has been a grim couple of days reading about and listening to testimony related to past abuse of children by Catholic priests, revelations from reports and documents that have been moldering in diocesan archives for decades. On March 1, as Cardinal Pell began his extraordinary testimony in Rome regarding acts of sexual assault over decades in Australia that led to scores of suicides, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, who had forced open the files of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnston, released yet another grand jury report on clerical abuse. Though elements of the story of abuse in Altoona-Johnston were already known because of press reports, this grand jury report marked the first, detailed and gruesome accounting of decades of criminal acts by at least 50 priests or religious leaders and attempts to obscure those crimes and hide away those offenders by diocesan officials.
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/put-spotlight-all-archives-abuse