Vatican Issues New Rules in Response to Sex Abuse Crisis; Victim's Rights Groups Unimpressed

[BurtWorm]

Look, but don't touch? A thousand and one Hail Mary's for your first offense?

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/07/15/world/europe/AP-EU-Vatican-Church-Abuse.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Andrew Medichini/Associated Press



Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor, left, and Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi discussed the new set of norms issued on Thursday to respond to the worldwide clerical abuse scandal.


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 15, 2010


Filed at 10:15 a.m. ET

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican issued a revised set of church guidelines Thursday to respond to the clerical sex abuse scandal, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children, defining child pornography as a canonical crime but making few substantive changes to existing practice.

The new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers and do not include any ''one-strike and you're out'' policy for pedophile priest as demanded by some victims.

As a result, they failed to satisfy victims' advocates, who said the revised guidelines amounted to little more than ''administrative housekeeping'' of existing practice when what was needed were bold new rules threatening bishops who fail to report abuse.

The Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor acknowledged it was ''only a document,'' and didn't solve the problem of clerical abuse. He defended the lack of any mention of the need to report abuse to police, saying all Christians were required to obey civil laws that would already demand sex crimes be reported.

...

''The first thing the church should be doing is reporting crimes to civil authorities,'' said Andrew Madden, a former Dublin altar boy who took the first public lawsuit against the church in Ireland in 1995.

''That's far, far more important than deciding whether a criminal priest should be defrocked or not,'' he told the AP in Dublin. ''The church's internal rules are no more important than the rules of your local golf club.''

Barbara Dorris, of Survivors' Network for Those Abused by Priests, said the new guidelines ''can be summed up in three words: missing the boat.''

...