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Bernard Law
(AP) |
“It is fair to say...that society has been on a learning
curve with regard to the sexual abuse of minors. The Church, too,
has been on a learning curve. We have learned, and we will
continue to learn. Never was there an effort on my part to shift a
problem from one place to the next. It has always
been my contention that it is better to know a problem and deal with it than to be kept in ignorance of it... In the
final analysis, after we have done all that we humanly can do to
ensure that persons who are a threat to children are isolated from
them, and after we have done all that we can do to bring some
measure of healing psychologically and emotionally to all who have
been traumatized by the sexual abuse of minors, it is only the
peace which is the gift of the Risen Lord that
can quiet our minds and hearts. His is a message of reconciling
love, and to the extent that we can accept that message, to that
extent we can all find healing.”
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Cardinal Bernard Law
July 27, 2001
Cardinal Law’s denial of complicity in hiding evidence of
priestly child abuse was published in the Boston Pilot,
America’s oldest Catholic newspaper, as Law himself faced civil
litigation from 70 parishioners in the Archdiocese of Boston.
Their lawsuit charged that Law deliberately concealed the crimes
of a pedophile priest—Rev. John Geoghan—and transferred
Geoghan to a new parish in 1985, without notifying police or
warning parishioners of Geoghan’s criminal activities. Cardinal
Law has admitted, in court documents, that he knew Father Geoghan
had molested seven boys in 1984, but approved Geoghan’s transfer
after an “independent medical examination” suggested the move
would be “appropriate and safe.”
In fact, it was neither.
On August 17, 2001, Christopher Reardon, a lay worker at St.
Agnes Catholic Church in Middleton, Massachusetts, was convicted
of molesting 29 boys and sentenced to a prison term of 40 to 50
years. Testimony in that case revealed that Cardinal Law’s
attorneys had encouraged various parishioners to withhold
information from investigators, fearing that the case would prompt
new lawsuits against the archdiocese. Despite that sworn evidence,
a Pilot editorial of August 24 insisted that “The
accusations that the cardinal ignored, was indifferent to, or
refused to address the scandalous behavior of any priest is, at
best, ignorant.” The same editorial went on to claim that “no
one has suffered more than Cardinal Law” from priestly sexual
abuse of children in the Archdiocese of Boston.
The victims of those crimes, their families and loved ones, are
inclined to disagree. They hold church leaders responsible for
every case in which child molestation by a priest was concealed
from authorities, hushed up with empty promises of counseling and
ardent admonitions to protect the good name of the church.
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James Porter, 1992
(AP) |
Those victims also note that the child-abuse problem in
Massachusetts churches did not begin with Father Geoghan or
Christopher Reardon in the 1980s. In fact, the archdiocese
established its longstanding pattern of denial and concealment
twenty years earlier, with the case of Father James Porter. A
serial predator who molested at least 125 children of both sexes,
claiming victims in five states, Porter was recognized as “a
problem” by his superiors in the early 1960s. Multiple
complaints, a criminal arrest, and several confessions from Porter
himself failed to prompt any meaningful action. Instead of
dismissal and prison, Porter was treated to multiple transfers,
vacations, and ineffective “spiritual counseling.” The end
result: a tragedy that shocked the nation when it was revealed,
more than three decades after Porter abused his first victim.
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