A message from SNAPDFW’s facilitator, Lisa Kendzior
Acknowledge your courage
;)
It takes courage to acknowledge that we’ve been abused and it is not easy to even admit it to ourselves. Just browsing this website is a big step.Know that you are not alone!
If you’ve been victimized by clergy, please know that you are not alone. You can get better. You can reach out to others who’ve been hurt just like you have.
Together, we can heal one another.
Tweet
;)
On 20 November 2009, the global community celebrated the 20th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the unique document that sets international standards for the care, treatment and protection of all individuals below age 18.Like all UN member states signing the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Vatican is required by international law to submit regular reports on its efforts to safeguard child rights.
But the Vatican has ignored repeated UN requests to file the report for years.
In 2009, a Vatican official announced to a UN assembly that the long-delinquent report was being "finalized as we speak."
Not so. The head of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child told the Associated Press just this month (July, 2010) that:
"... the UN required Vatican report "is now almost 13 years overdue."
"A LEGALLY BINDING INSTRUMENT"
According to the UNICEF website Unite for Children, filing the report is a legally binding, international responsibility:
""The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too." Unite for Children, UNICEF
LINKS
Read 'Vatican breaks UN treaty on children's safety; SNAP responds' on the SNAP national website ...
Download the 16 page executive summary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child from the UNICEF website ...
For more on the CRC, visit Unite for Children on the UNICEF website ...
[ view entry ] ( 544 views ) | permalink
Convicted Mother Teresa spiritual advisor used status to prey on unsuspecting families and children; SNAP responds
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled to keep Fr. Donald McGuire behind bars. McGuire is an unrepentant, narcissistic, serial child predator who used his status as a Jesuit and Mother Teresa’s spiritual adviser to prey on unsuspecting families and kids."This case should remind all sex abuse victims that even the most high profile, widely-respected and cunning child molesting cleric can sometimes be prosecuted and kept away from kids if only we are brave, patient and persistent." -- SNAP founder Barbara Blaine
Read SNAP founder and president Barbara Blaine's full statement on the SNAP national website ...
[ view entry ] ( 547 views ) | permalink
'Rome fiddles, We Burn' - NYTimes Columnist Marueen Dowd comments on latest Vatican priest sex crime rules
"The church still believes in its own intrinsic holiness despite all evidence to the contrary...
"The casuistic document"There is no moral awakening here. The cruelty and indecency of child abuse once more inspires tactical contrition. All the penitence of the church is grudging and reactive. Church leaders are merely as penitent as they need to be to protect the institution. " -- Maureen Dowd, NY Times Published July 16, 2010
- did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia;
- it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police;
- it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug;
- it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children;
- it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened.
;)
Read the entire column "Rome Fiddles, We Burn" on the NYTimes website ...
[ view entry ] ( 1016 views ) | permalink
Canonist and survivors' advocate Thomas Doyle speaks out on new Roman rules for handling sex abuse by priests
"The main problem with the Vatican's latest attempt at damage control is that they continue to deny the fundamental issue: the nature of the clericalized monarchical structure of the institutional church and its role in the systematic dismantling of the reality of church as People of God."
"The norms list several canonical crimes that are subject to the CDF. There is a serious gap in this list: failure to properly and responsibly respond to reports of sex abuse by clerics. This would obviously nail the majority of U.S. bishops, both retired and active. This crime is just as devastating as the sex abuse itself because it obviously enables continued rape and molestation of innocent children and adults. The bishops' systemic practice of cover-up and dishonesty, which should be a crime, is also a gross insult to all lay persons and not just victims and their families."
"The cloak of secrecy hasn't been removed. (The Vatican spokesman) claims that secrecy is maintained "in order to safeguard the dignity of all the people involved." This of course, is a lame excuse for the Vatican's obsession with image."
"The eighth revision is a potential for disaster. This one gives the local bishops the power to proceed judicially against people whom they suspect of heresy, apostasy or schism. The potential for misuse of this norm and the consequent denial of due process and the right of free expression to people the bishops decide don't think like them is terrifying."
[Tom Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist and long-time supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse survivors.]
Read Tom Doyle's entire article "The Vatican's new norms" on the NCR website ...
[ view entry ] ( 581 views ) | permalink
Catholic news outlet calls Vatican refusal to implicate bishops in sexual crime coverup 'the elephant in the sanctuary'
"Lacking in both the Dallas Norms governing the American church and Cardinal Levada’s announcement of changes in the church’s universal laws was any mention of the fate of bishops who, by ignoring the reported sexual abuse of children by their priests, allow them to victimize yet other children."The Dallas Norms effectively shifted the burden of the abuse crisis from the bishops who ignored the abuse to the priests who perpetrated it. The universal norms announced by Cardinal Levada ignore the problem entirely." -- National Catholic Reporter "This truly is the elephant in the sanctuary.
Read the full article on the NCROnline website ...
[ view entry ] ( 475 views ) | permalink
Mega-church elder pleads guilty to rape of church member, and to pending charge of spreading HIV ...
[Dallas, TX] Nathaniel Tumbwe, a self-proclaimed "reverend, doctor and prince" pleaded guilty Friday to raping a church member while still an elder in the Dallas mega-church Potter's House. Tumbwe also pleaded guilty to a pending charge of transmitting HIV to another women. A third victim was prepared to testify to having also been unknowingly infected with HIV by the former churchman.After the guilty plea, Tumbwe's rape victim took the witness stand to address Tumbwe in a victim impact statement, in which, in part, she said directly to her perpetrator:
"Mr. Tumbwe, not Rev. Dr. Tumbwe, not Rev. Dr. Prince Tumbwe - Nathaniel Tumbwe, how dare you think you can take advantage of a woman, especially a Christian woman?
"You caused me considerable damage and pain," she said. "Every Sunday, it's in my mind. You caused me to question the church and the faith community.
"How dare you, how dare you, how dare you ..."
The former minister-rapist will serve concurrent 15 year sentences for the charges. Upon release or parole, he will be deported by US authorities.
Read the story in yesterdays Dallas Morning News ...
Read SNAP outreach director Barbara Dorris' statement, issued prior to the outcome of the trial ...
[ view entry ] ( 592 views ) | permalink
Vatican reduces protection for 23.7% of potential victims of priest child rape; claims 'major contribution'
Although the recently released rewording of Vatican status quo on the priest rape crisis extends the Vatican's self-authored statute of limitations to 20 years, the Ratzinger administration has, in essence, increased the dangerous vulnerability of children between ages 14 and 18 by removing their already flimsy Roman hierarchy protection from pornographic rape by priests.According to the Roman church's own statistics, 23.7% of priest rape victims are between ages 14 and 18. SNAP suspects the number to be much higher. However, in light of that report, the Vatican's latest "major contribution" to "rigor and transparency" in dealing with its priests' criminal rape of children, actually makes this 23.7% of potential victims, i.e. the age group 14-18, to be more vulnerable to predator priests, not less.
Read 'The Politics of Statistics' from Commonweal magazine on the Bishops Accountablitly website ...
[ view entry ] ( 474 views ) | permalink
Vatican tweaks statute; defines "child" as under 14; groups women priests, priest rapists; remains unaccountable
In yet another grossly insensitive attempt to manipulate public opinion in its favor and against its own victims, the Vatican has produced a woefully inadequate rewrite of its long standing status quo in regards to the protection of child victims of priest and priesthood rape. SNAP's response is that "the church's approach needs 'massive overhaul, not mere tweaking."Although the statement extends the Vatican-self-authored statute of limitations to 20 years, the Ratzinger administration has, in essence, increased the dangerous vulnerability of children between ages 14 and 18 by removing their protection from pornographic rape by priests.
According to the John Jay report of 2003, commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, 23.7% of priest rape victims are between ages 14 and 18. The Vatican's latest "major contribution" to "rigor and transparency" in dealing with its priests' criminal rape of children, renders that age group more vulnerable to predator priests, not less.
Read the two SNAP responses to Vatican "guidelines" rewording status quo ...
Read 'Vatican revises church law on sex abuse' on the NCROnline website ...
[ view entry ] ( 373 views ) | permalink
A "magisterial" document (i.e. a divinely sanctioned, self-proclaimed "infallible" teaching by the Roman hierarchy) to be released later this summer by the Vatican is reported to include the ordination of women in the same category as sexual abuse by priests.
"Mixing the two issues, even under the same legal umbrella, is a profoundly perverse proposition. Either these gentlemen are more ethically tone deaf than one can imagine, or they are sly beyond the dreams of foxes in an effort to redirect attention from the criminal behavior of clergy against children to their wrath over the ordination of women." -- Mary E. Hunt, PhD, Roman Catholic theologian, July 12, 2010
Read Hunt's entire article published Monday on the Religion Dispatches Magazine website ...
[ view entry ] ( 424 views ) | permalink
Roman church, Roman Polanski use similar tactics to evade justice for sexual abuse of minors, says SNAP leader
Many in SNAP are victims of perpetrators who, even when convicted or who admit guilt, escape justice anyway by what SNAP President Barbara Blaine calls, "political clout, shrewd maneuvering or by 'running out the clock' on the statute of limitations.' This points out the extreme similarity between the case of admitted child rapist, Roman Polanski and the Roman church's long-standing history of evasion from the law, as seen clearly in the current global priest pedophile crisis.
"Polanski case about rape, not legal wrangling. Let's not forget that" -- Headline of article in LA Times, July 12, 2010
"This is a travesty. Our hearts go out to anyone who was hurt by Polanski and to the tens of thousands of sexual assault victims whose perpetrators escaped justice by political clout, shrewd maneuvering or by 'running out the clock' on the statute of limitations." -- SNAP President Barbara Blaine, July 12, 2010
Polanski was released yesterday from house arrest in Switzerland, where the Swiss government refuses to allow the confessed and convicted child rapist to be extradited to the US for sentencing.
The Roman church's 2000 year history of secrecy, and evasion of criminal prosecution for its crimes against children and against humanity in general, can be seen as saturated with such legalistic maneuvers in order to remain seemingly "holy,' except for its scapegoated, but still protected, priests rapists, and their protective bishops.
For a fuller insight, read the two articles linked below.
Read the commentary from yesterday's LA Times Blogs ...
Read SNAP President Barbara Blaine's response in the SNAP National Website yesterday ...
[ view entry ] ( 379 views ) | permalink
"Levada (then archbishop of San Francisco, now Vatican chief inquisitor) reported to us on the SF Review Board that it was the opinion of the Inquisition (now the Vatican's CDF, then run by Ratzinger) that canon law should always supersede American law.
"Ratzinger and his allies in the curia were maneuvering to render all of the investigations of the Review Boards worthless before they even got started."Little did we then know that the hierarchy never had any intention of ever conducting independent and unvarnished investigations of sexual abuse by priests."
"One of the architects of the so-called "Dallas Charter," the Rev. Gregory Ingels, [canon lawyer and former SF chancellor for Levada] himself eventually indicted by a Marin County grand jury for the rape and sodomy of adolescents, predicted to me personally that canonical charges against him would never stand because of the prescriptions in canon law regarding statute of limitations and the majority age of males and females.
"My recollection of Levada's report of his consultations at the Inquisition was that the curia was not too pleased with the "zero tolerance" approach either adopted by American bishops at their Dallas meetings.
Face it, with Ratzinger running the show at the Inquisition, and now as pope, there was never any intention to deal forthrightly with the abuse scandal on the part of the Vatican hierarchy."
James A. Jenkins, PhD; former chair of the San Francisco (Archdiocesan) Review Board.
-- Newsletter for the National Survivors Advocacy Coalition, 08 July 2010 ...
[ view entry ] ( 1996 views ) | permalink
Vatican office headed by Ratzinger successor ignores case of still active pedophile priest from 2005 to the present
Follow the trail of official documents and letters from 2005 to the present in this telling case of a priest pedophile transferred to the US where he molested young girls, and then was transferred to India where he still, to this day, heads an "Education" office which gives him full access to young potential victims. The Vatican and the Jeyapaul Case
from the Bishops Accountability website
In 2004, Catholic priest Jeyapaul Joseph Palanivel was accepted by the U.S. Diocese of Crookston in Minnesota for parish work. The arrangement had been proposed for Jeyapaul, as the priest is usually known, by his home diocese of Ootacamund in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India. Jeyapaul was in Crookston for less than a year, but in that brief time, he is accused of sexually abusing two female minors, is suspected of abusing at least one other girl, and is now the subject of a police investigation and a civil suit. Jeyapaul is also accused of taking money from the Crookston diocese.
Crookston bishop Victor Balke wrote repeatedly to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, urging it to take the Jeyapaul case, and even appealed to the office in person.
Yet as of April 5, 2010, over five years after he allegedly committed the crimes, Jeyapaul is a senior official in the Diocese of Ootacamund, with the schools as one of his portfolios, and the CDF has ignored the case.
The link, below, the Bishop Accountability Web page on the case provides documents that were obtained by counsel for the plaintiff in the civil suit, Jane Doe 121 v. the Diocese of Crookston.
"The documents show the Vatican allowing a priest to remain in ministry, though the CDF has long possessed strong evidence that he is credibly accused."
-- Bishops Accountability website, July, 2010.
At a time when the role of the Vatican bureaucracy in abuse cases is coming under increased scrutiny, the Jeyapaul documents show the Vatican allowing a priest to remain in ministry, though the CDF has long possessed strong evidence that he is credibly accused. At a time when foreign priests are being used to patch a U.S. priest shortage, the Jeyapaul documents cast doubt on the formation of such priests, and on the system's ability to monitor and discipline them effectively.
Below is a link to the timeline of the Jeyapaul case with links to dozens of documents. The paper trail of neglect by Cardinal Levada at the CDF is contained in five documents: Bishop Balke's original 2005 request, the CDF's inadequate response, and then Balke's increasingly urgent letters, as the case worsened in his own diocese: see the letters he wrote in November 2006, December 2006, and March 2007.
Follow the document trail and read "Vatican, CDF, and Cardinal Levada's involvement from 2005 to the present in sexual abuse allegations against Father Joseph Jeyapaul" on the Bishop Acccountability website ...
[ view entry ] ( 1722 views ) | permalink
Archives
