After McCarrick Report, Here’s How to Extend Safe Environment to Adults

After McCarrick Report, Here’s How to Extend Safe Environment to Adults

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

December 12, 2020

By Peter Jesserer Smith 

New resources to extend Safe Environment protections to all adults could help stop future McCarricks and break the global clergy abuse crisis.

Ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was finally brought down by credible allegations that he had sexually abused children — but as the McCarrick report reveals Church leaders could have stopped the powerful cleric’s career, and saved the lives of children, seminarians, and young priests, had they acted on allegations McCarrick had abused his power to sexually exploit young men under his pastoral care or authority.

But stopping the present and future McCarricks in the Church’s midst means the People of God need to take proactive steps to educate and inform themselves about adult sexual abuse in the Church, recognizing that every adult can be vulnerable to the abuse of power for sex by clergy and lay leaders, and that protecting adults from abuse in the Church strengthens also the protection of children.