Should the Catholic Church be charged with conspiracy to commit sex offences against children?

This not just a Catholic church issue. Any group that caters to children will have their alleged child abuse problems. The Catholic Church is just gettging more press on this horrible problem.

I don’t know that there’s a conspiracy to commit acts of sex offense. There certainly seems to be a conspiracy to hide such acts as have already occurred. One might go so far as to say they could be charged with gross negligence, in seeming to do nothing to prevent such acts from occurring when they had reasonable suspicion that they were.

@Cruiser Thats very true, & each one should be dealt with in turn. Im going to be deliberately spikey here, are you suggesting that the Cathlic Church should be allowed to get away with it just because other institutions are also affected by this?

I think there’s definitely a crime committed in covering up sex abuse. I’m not sure who or how one would go about prosecuting it, but I think it should be pursued.

@Cruiser The Catholic Church is different because they’ve covered it up, because they’ve failed to put in place appropriate safeguards, and because they’ve put known sex offenders right back into parishes. The tendency to look the other way is significantly different from other groups that cater to children. I also think it has been far more prevalent in the Catholic Church than in other organizations due to the ridiculous notion that that many men (the priests) can be expected to be completely non-sexual for their entire lives. That’s bound to recruit at least a few more of the wrong kind of people. I don’t have the facts to say for certain whether it is more prominent in the Catholic Church as a whole, but in the case of Catholic schools, orphanages, and hospitals in Ireland, abuse of all kinds has been a serious problem, at levels that would have brought down any other kind of school in the United States. It is pervasive and the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse described it as “endemic sexual abuse”.

Taking the counter example of the Boy Scouts of America we find that the BSA implemented procedures to prevent child abuse, including a policy that no adult is ever allowed to be alone with a boy who is not his son. Adults and children cannot share sleeping quarters (outside of father and son) and must have separate shower facilities or at least separate times to use them. Leaders are given instruction in how to recognize abuse, and on how to scrutinize potential volunteer leaders in an effort to prevent predators from becoming involved. Of course this isn’t perfect, but it’s a reasonable effort, which the Catholic Church has not made. Priests make their own rules, they can “counsel” boys in their private quarters at will, and no one asks why a man who lives alone with his mother and has never dated wants to be so involved with youth. When I was in Boy Scouts a number of abusers were discovered in my area. I was fortunate enough not to have been a victim, but in every case the abusers were reported to the legal authorities and ultimately successfully prosecuted. The only difficulty was in one case in which someone walked in on abuse in the act and had to be prevented from beating the abuser to death on the spot. Again, contrast that with the Catholic Church that sends the offenders off for spiritual counseling or some such, has the victims sign gag orders, and then sends the offender right back into the fold.

The case of the Catholic Church is different because of a lack of policies to prevent abuse and because it was routinely covered up. I think there’s a crime there.

It is criminal to let it go on and on, and to let the abusers just move around to different churches.

@MrItty I agree with that, to a degree. However this wasn’t just a case of hiding existing offences. The church knew well enough that these perverts would commit new offenses wherever they were placed, yet they continued to relocate them time & time again.

@JeffVader Right. That’s what I meant by negligence. They allowed it to happen. That’s different from saying they engaged in a conspiracy to make it happen.

@Snarp and @JeffVader Again this is not just a Catholic Church covering up the problem then getting caught issue. Every religious group, school, youth group has their cover ups and all you have to do is look for them. The Catholic Church just has the bigger bulls-eye on their back and is getting all the press is all. The stench and hypocrisy of a Catholic Priest abusing a child is really no greater than that if a Rabbi, Monk, Mullah, pastor, Scoutmaster, day care worker or teacher etc. was involved.

@marinelife Many thanks for such a well thought through and conclusive answer. You managed to hit the nail on the head better than I was able. The reason I think they would be liable to a charge of conspiracy is the fact that they knew these people would continue to offend, & yet they kept sending them back into the community to commit more.

@Cruiser But again, it feels like you saying that just because other people are also guilty that it’s sort-of ok for the Church to do what it did.

@Cruiser Either you didn’t read a word I wrote, or you just don’t believe me. Other organizations that deal almost entirely with youth put in place safeguards to prevent this kind of thing and report abuse to the proper authorities. The Catholic Church routinely and for decades has systematically covered up abuse and done nothing to stop it, which has led to abuse so significant that an organization that only deals with youth as part of its mission has a far worse record of abuse than organizations that deal exclusively with youth. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen to other entities, but other organizations, particularly large ones, handle it the right way and the Catholic Church, which is one of the largest, most wide spread, wealthiest, and most influential organizations on the planet hasn’t. When abuse is widespread in an institution as large and far reaching as the Catholic Church due to evident lack of prevention policies and a willingness to cover up and allow offenders to continue to work with children, then they deserve the scrutiny they are getting.

@MrItty Do you not feel that this goes well beyond negligence though. Negligence would be perhaps, unsubstantiated allegations, relocate the person once & there are no more allegations. Is it really negligence to relocate a priest 20 times because each time he’s being accused of raping children? At some point negligence becomes wilful assistance, & as soon as this is known & condoned by more than 1 person it becomes conspiracy.

@Snarp I did read what you wrote, and you are right about the Scouts having their Youth Protection program but this relatively recent program dealing with an ancient problem and will only weed out the people who have been caught and have a criminal record. Pedophiles exist everywhere always have and always will. The Boy Scouts have their fair share of cover-ups and again just google any group that caters to kids and you will find lots of unsavory cover-ups. I will add that if more groups did follow the “2-deep” model of the Boy Scouts there would be a lot less instances of child abuse.

@Cruiser Well, it may be relatively recent, but it’s 20 years old, and that’s twenty years in which the Catholic Church has done nothing.

The Catholic Church is an enormous organization spanning the globe, with a clear hierarchical structure that goes all the way to the top, and the same pattern emerges in country after country of Catholic priests committing abuse, being covered up for, and being returned to work with use. That is a systemic problem on a global level, and it’s not like anything any other organization is even capable of, whatever individual problems they may have.

@JeffVader No, I don’t. To show that these acts are “willful assistance”, you’d have to show me (how, I don’t know), that those in charge of the relocations intended for more children to be sexually abused, and they specifically and intentionally gave these priests relocations so that they would be able to molest more children.

I do not believe that has occurred. I believe the Church has been disgustingly naive and ignorant. I believe they thought that “If we just move him, he’ll be able to get a fresh start, and put this mess behind him.” In my mind, that’s criminal negligence, not criminal intent. Of course, I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea if my definitions in any way match up with legal definitions.

@MrItty No worries, & thank you for the clarrification. Questions like this can be tricky to aswer fully so I hope you dont mind me pressing for more info.

@Snarp I know what you are trying to say and can’t disagree but again this is not an issue at all unique to the Catholic Church. Same can be and should be said for all organizations that interact with our children. I would argue that the “per capita” incidence is probably similar across all groups and the lime light of recent press is merely focused on the hypocrisy element of the Catholic Church and it’s cover up efforts which again could be applied to any of these groups.

@JeffVader Looks like your turn today! I agree with you, the churches should be punished, in what way I don’t know. Because it is religion, you have to be careful how punishment is made.

No. I don’t think the church should be charged with conspiracy. I mean the parents took the money and signed the contracts also, there is quite a bit of blame to go around. Also, years ago I think society was less willing to hear these types of accusations and believe them, and also there would be a stigma on the family and child.

I think the only things to do is to do the right thing going forward. Oh, and of course any priests who are still out there that the church knows abused any children previously need to be kicked out and prosecuted.

Part of the problem is that for centuries the Catholic Church was a law unto itself. The Pope was the most powerful man in Europe, perhaps the world, and Vatican City wasn’t just a sort of figure head of a state, it was the seat of power of an empire that spanned Europe. While most of the world has left that notion far behind, the Catholic Church, and even governments in some heavily Catholic areas (like Ireland and southern Germany) still feel that the Catholic Church is above the law, that it has every right to handle it’s own issues internally, even if they involve serious breaches of secular laws. To the Church, anything that goes on between a member of the Catholic Church and a Priest or other official of the Church, is a matter of ecclesiastical law, not of secular law (except of course in the circumstance that the member is the offender and the Priest the victim, conveniently enough). Some governments are reluctant to force the Church to abandon this conceit. The Catholic Church needs to be made fully accountable to secular law, just like any other church or organization.

Also, I agree with @Cruiser. I was always taught to be aware of men who work around children, teachers, coaches, etc. It has been going on forever.

@JLeslie I dont mean to be provocative, but that sounds an aweful lot like your suggesting it be swept under the carpet.

@JeffVader Not at all, but thanking you for giving me the chance to explain. Let me back up. When all of this came out about Priests being pedophiles I was not surprised. That so many people were surprised was a little disturbing to me. How can people be so naive? I vaguely remembered at the time of all of this coming out that I had seen a court case against a priest years before, but maybe it was a different church, different clergy, I am not clear in my memory, that had been accused of this very thing. It seemed logical to me that the church would be an easy place for young children to be abused, as awful as that sounds.

I say the same thing about 9/11. I mean Kamakazi pilots flew planes into targets during WWII. Terrorist attacks happen all over the world, that had been happening in recent history. They had targeted us before at the World Trade Center, Yemen, and other places. Osama Bin Laden was already on the FBI top 10 list. We had our own Oklahoma terrorist bombing. Naive. But I digress.

I also stated that I think the priests need to be prosecuted, even if it happened 20 years ago, so I definitely don’t want it swept under the rug. The whole thing is appalling to me.

@JLeslie Many thanks for the clarification. Just one more thing, do you think the church should be held collectively liable for the actions of its paedophile priests, & the multitude of others that helped cover it up. Or should any prosecutions be on an individual basis, dependant upon the potential crime that was committed.
Personally I feel that the church as a whole has a case to answer.

@JeffVader I lean towards only prosecuting the priest himself. If the “church” meaning other members of the church who did not commit the actual crime were questioned by the police and lied to cover it up, then I think those people are culpable of a crime and prosecution also. Do you think the parents who took money and agreed to say nothing are culpable of the next child that same priest molested?

I’m pretty sure that in the United States if you have knowledge of a felony and don’t report it, that is a crime. Well, at least that’s what the cops told Spenser in the book I just read. So whether or not they were questioned by police, if Catholic Church officials knew that priests had committed sexual acts on children and did not report it, they are guilty of a crime, in addition to being negligent.

I don’t think the Catholic church/religion should be blamed for this. Like @Cruiser said, sadly there are cases and cover-ups like this everywhere. The individuals involved (the abusers and the ones covering for them including the parents who signed contracts as @JLeslie said) are the ones to blame and punish not a whole religion. Just like in every walk of life there is good and bad individuals. I don’t think the whole church should be blamed for the disgusting actions of these individuals who use there “faith” to convince people that they are good, law abding citizens and then commit the ultimate betayal.

@Snarp Good point. If that is the case, then I would agree they should be prosecuted, the people who had the knowledge.

I guess my question is, if we charge the church with conspiracy, what exactly does that mean? Who exactly is getting charged? What would the penalties be? The other thing is I still mainatin we are in a 2010 mindset, back 20 to 30 years ago, even if the cases were not hidden, I wonder if it would have been handled differently by the authorities than they would today? I don’t know the answer, just putting the question out there.

@JLeslie Now that’s an excellent point….. It could easily be argued that by accepting money & signing the contract that the parents had become implicit in the deception & therefore involved in the conspiracy….. At first I was going to say no, however upon further thought I’ve changed my mind. Yes, I think the parents should also be charged, perhaps with a lesser offence, but certainly with something.

@JeffVader Huh. You went the opposite direction than I would have expected. My example was not for you to want to prosecute the parents, but to explain why I was going soft on the church. Interesting.

@MrItty Can we get back to your lack of concession to the term “willful” assistance? Because I think you’re overlooking “compliance”, “avoidance”, and “facilitation” which add up to the same thing. If I know that you like to molest children and I; 1. Fail to take action to stop you when it is in my power to do so, 2.Keep it quiet and cover up what you have already done, 3. Send you to yet another place which is unaware of your predilections and ripe for the further continuance of your activities- not just once but every time you get caught- how am I not willfully assisting you?
If I have the option and means to stop you, and I don’t do it, I’m making a choice. The power of choice indicates freewill. Ergo – my assistance to your continuance if willful.

@Leanne1986 Good points, however consider this. Companies can now be charged with offences such as corporate manslaughter, if they cause death through their structural failings. I know a number of train companies have been investigated for this offence in the UK. So why not charge the church as being liable for a corporate conspiracy. Clearly child sexual abuse was well known within the church across multiple countries. Each & every church responded in the same way, with cover-ups. Surely this would indicate some fundamental structural problem, in the same way that structural problems in rail can cause crashes & deaths.

@JLeslie Heh, yeh, my about turn took me by suprise too. I was in the middle of my answer & had to delete it & start again :)

@Trillian Do you think the church wanted to believe the priests committing these crimes would change? They had some Christian belief that they could come to Jesus and reform?

@JLeslie I would hope that these leaders were savvy enough to know better. And belief in reform aside. The pattern is to plunk them down in a new parish and not warn the parishioners.
Additionally, this has been going on for enough years that the “I thought he would change” excuse is not valid.

@JeffVader When you say “charged” how do you mean? How would we punish the whole church for the actions of certain individuals? I don’t like the idea of a lot of innocent people suffering because of the individuals actions. I definately think that anyone who knew when a crime was commited but didn’t report it should be punished but the whole church? If a school teacher abuses a child and another teacher knows about it but doesn’t report it that’s still only two people commiting a crime, should the whole school be punished for the actions of two people?

@Trillian I agree the repeated offenses is what makes it impossible to tolerate. I have no idea what the church leaders were thinking, just throwing stuff out there. I see how Christians react to homosexuality, believing the person can change, have an epiphany of some sort. I just wondered if that was at play somehow. For sure I think the church wanted to keep it hidden because it would tarnish the church.

I once read that some priests did not see it as sex, when it was with children, some bullshit. But, not sure how valid that is. That maybe they were not in tune with it being abusive? I mean if we think the worst, that it was the culture of the church, then they don’t even get that there is something very wrong with it. Back in the day I think young men went in at very young ages, then told to be celibate, not much discussion on the subject though. I would guess that some of the abusers had been abused themselves by priests. I would guess the vast majority of pediphiles in the church went to the priesthood because they saw an amazing opportunity to get to children, but I wonder if there are some who were almost groomed by the church itself? Sounds too sinister to most I would think, sounds hateful of the Catholic church.

@Trillian you are willfully assisting this hypothetical person not get caught. You are willfully assisting him in avoiding justice. If you honestly believe that it won’t happen again, you are not willfully assisting him in committing a future transgression.

You mention “compliance”, “avoidance”, and “facilitation”. You overlook “intent”, which I think is the bigger component in the difference between negligence and the criminal act itself.

@Leanne1986 I would use corporate law as the template. The CEO of a business is legally responsible for the actions of his/her company. I would make the head of each nations church responsible for its actions. Additionally it would allow you to slam the church with colossal damages claims. At worst you may even wish to charge the Pope as the final point of responsibility.
By doing this I’m not suggesting the individual would get off Scot-free. I think the corporate prosecution should be in addition to the individual prosecutions.

@Trillian I guess another way of putting it – if they honestly believed it wouldn’t happen again, can we charge them with Criminal Stupidity?

@MrItty Yes, why not. However I would contest the idea of this being an honest, yet misguided mistake at all. This was a clear policy of cover-ups, carried out over decades, by hundreds of senior church leaders. This was no act of stupidity….. it’s a border line crime against humanity.

@MrItty I’m not discussing intent. I only attempted to demonstrate that the assistance is willful. Intent and results are two wildly different things sometimes, and I would also point out that one time moving someone and them not rehabilitating would, in my book, make me think that a second move would serve no purpose but damage to a child. I mean, yet another child.
To say that I thought you would be able to be rehabilitated but that in the meantime, here is a nice fresh group of helpless children and trusting parents is the height of folly.
You don’t put a recovering alcoholic in a liquor store, you don’t let a recovering obese person bring the cookies to the party, and you certainly don’t let a rehabilitating pedophile get anywhere near children.
Kudos to me for not using quotation marks around rehabilitating pedophile.

@JeffVader But it is possible the church was stupid and ignorant about the impact on the child. Not that it excuses anything.

@JeffVader I see what you are saying but I am still not convinced that I agree with holding anyone who had no knowledge of the crimes of another individual responsible. That goes back to my point about the school. Why should the headmaster/mistress of the school be made to pay for something he/she was unaware of? It seems very unfair. These individuals have committed horrible crimes that have damaged the lives of others, by holding the whole church (or whatever business they are a part of because, as we know, this type of thing doesn’t just go on in the church) they are damaging even more lives. If the head of a specific church had absolutely no knowledge of these crimes, why should they be made to pay? What will this achieve?

@JLeslie No, it’s not possible, at all. The church had absolutely no interest in the child in this, it was, time & time again a policy to cover their own arses. It was cynical & criminal.

@Trillian http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/willful
will·ful
   /ˈwɪlfəl/ [wil-fuhl]
–adjective
1.
deliberate, voluntary, or intentional: The coroner ruled the death willful murder.

You cannot separate willful from intent. If something wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t willful.

@Leanne1986 The head of any organisation sets the standards… & it isn’t a question of the church leaders not knowing. They knew, they were implicit in the cover-ups. Even if they weren’t made personally aware of every individual case of abuse they were well aware of it in general, & they directed & condoned the moving of known paedophiles within their organisation. If the church leaders had come down hard, straight away, if they had held these perverts up to the light of public scrutiny, if they had immediately set in place standards of care & monitoring, then absolutely, I wouldn’t be suggesting holding church leaders to account collectively. But they chose not to, they didn’t even try. They actively promoted & supported a policy of protecting child molesters. & by doing this directly caused the suffering of many more children. That’s why I feel they need to held accountable in court for the actions they took.

@JeffVader In that case they were involved in the crimes (because they knew about them but didn’t bring them to light) so everything I said above still stands.

I believe it’s right to sort out who was responsible for covering it up, how far up the chain of command it went, and have them stand trial for thier roles for conspiracy to cover up child abuse. To my knowlege, they didn’t conspire to commit sexual offenses against children. They conspired to cover it up. That it comes from the Catholic church doesn’t change my mind one whit. If anything, they had an added responsiblity to these children and the families that trusted the lecherous priests. They are in the business to save souls, not corrupt them. The duty to that end cannot be overstated enough. That betrayal, and the damage done to the children, deserves proper punishment. Sue the church, make the Vatican feel it.

@phillis The churches money in the end is the money that has been donated, I don’t even see how suing the church hurts it at all. Unless Catholics begin to actually leave the church so less donations are coming in. Not that I don’t think the families deserve some sort of compensation including paying for any psychological needs of the children. But, from what I understand the families were paid. Jail for the predators is in order.

I agree that jail is the proper end result, hence the GA. I believe (I could be wrong) that the church has known about this for years, including the Vatican. And it was covered up by the church, including the Vatican. That deserves punishment. I prefer prison time, and the Pope can kiss my ring, if he disagrees. If the victims opt to settle out of court, fine. But donations or not, there are people in the Vatican, and they don’t feel the rape unless it hits them, personally. That’s human nature. So far, they have used supposed piety and the reputation of the church, to deter full scale investigations. NOBODY is exempt from the law, not even a city unto itself. They deserve to revisit thier piety in prison.

I think the individual dioceses can be investigated. The monsignors, at the very least, have knowledge of what the priests are doing in these cases, and they’re the ones moving them to different parishes. I’m sure it’s rare for something to be handled by a Cardinal or higher up.

@phillis I think we agree. Possibly I misunderstood you because I think of suing as a civil matter, and jail time and prosecution as a criminal matter. They are separate in the US, not sure if you are in the US?

I submit that a suitable penalty for the Catholic Church, at least in the United States, and assuming that a systemic pattern of covering up abuse and returning abusers to the fold can be shown (which I believe it can) is to revoke the Church’s tax exempt status. I don’t know of any legal procedure for that, but that’s my idea anyway.

@Snarp Because you think of it as a sham? That it is not really a religion per se? I don’t know much about the tax exemption. The criteria it must meet? I don’t think it would work. I mean, I don’t think Catholicism would ever be seen as a cult or not a legitmate religion, it would just be that the people running the thing right now are screwed up. I have a feeling people would seperate the two since Catholicism has been around so long, and generally it’s followers are not secluded from others, and can function in society. An investigation might cause a big upheaval, get rid of a bunch of priests, bishops, etc, maybe they would allow women into the priesthood, or priests to get married again, if anything for image sake. I dont know? What do you think?

@JLeslie No, as far as religions go it’s as legitimate as they get. I don’t have a real legal justification, I’m just thinking of a penalty that would actually make the Church leaders feel it. I think losing tax exempt status would hurt more than any fine they might have to pay.

@JLeslie Yes, I am from the US. I wasn’t differentiating between the civil and criminal aspects because, in this case, both would happen, with the civil trial beginning after the criminal trial was over, regardless of the criminal trial’s outcome.

@phillis So I guess you are thinking a class action suit maybe?

@Snarp I see. I would not mind seeing all religions have to pay taxes, at minimum property tax. But that is a whole other topic.

@JLeslie I was wondering how that would work! I honestly have no idea if a class action suit is permissable in a case like this, since churches pay no taxes and aren’t required to file annually. Interesting point, to be sure. I don’t know the answer.

@JLeslie I think that the Catholic Church has a tendency to still believe in its medieval right to enforce it’s own law where priestly wrongdoing is concerned. I think that something needs to be done to make sure that the Church understands that it is not a law unto itself, that crimes committed by it’s officials against it’s members (and others) must be reported to the proper secular authorities for prosecution in addition to whatever penalty the Church doles out. Seems to me that one way to do that is to say that if you don’t recognize the full authority of the secular law of states in which you operate, you may not be tax exempt. That way it’s a penalty directly related to the core problem and can be lifted if justified later on. Of course, that would probably require legislation, and what do you think the odds on that passing would be?

That said, I’m all for all churches paying their taxes, but as you said, that’s another topic.

@Snarp Excellent points. Who the hell does one report to, when those same authorities are the conspirators? The victims have no legal recourse. That has got to be a maddening experience, being victimized twice by those who are supposed to represent purity and fairness, according to the laws of God. Those laws were intended to trump man’s laws, taking fairness to a whole new level. What a terrible slap in the face, to be so thoroughly betrayed. It’s no surprise to me that many of these victims have such deep emotional scars. It’s pitiful.

@Snarp Did you see what just hit the wires?? Boy Scouts Org waist deep in a decades long cover-up! Go figure!

I am an assistant Scout leader and am deeply grateful for their new 2 deep policy.

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/boy-scouts-accused-of-massive-sex-abuse-coverup/19406511?icid=main|htmlws-main-n|dl1|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fnation%2Farticle%2Fboy-scouts-accused-of-massive-sex-abuse-coverup%2F19406511

@Cruiser All that article says, once you dig past the sensationalism, is the the BSA kept files on potential abusers. One lawyer says they used those files in a cover up, the BSA says they were used to help prevent abuse. I’m not going to make a judgment on it until there’s a little more information than that. If the allegations are true, then color me unpleasantly surprised. But I still believe the Boy Scouts have a better system in place for dealing with abuse than the Catholic Church.

Also, you keep calling the 2 deep policy new, but it’s not new. I was trained in it nearly twenty years ago. And when did the Catholic Church introduce their 2 deep policy, background checks, and training procedures on child abuse?

Yes. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the Federal Minister of Justice of Germany, has accused the Catholic Church exactly of that and she created quite a stir. I think she’s exactly right. The Vatican implemented a system undermining jurisdictions of our secular states. If crimes were committed for example by priests like having sex with children the responsible bishop was instructed to keep all reports inside the Catholic hierarchy. The Vatican actually thinks it’s above the law. The criminal “investigation” usually led to the transfer of such priests and public authorities never learned of this. In fact, very often those priests could find new innocent children to satisfy their sexual needs. The Pope is part of this ludicrous system and blaming his underlings only is hypocrisy.

No.