500 priests, and other thoughts on the Illinois preliminary report on clerical sexual abuse of minors

Yesterday, I posted about a new report on Catholic clerical sexual abuse, released by the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan.  My overall view is that the report is credible, and that it's devastating for the church here in Illinois.  Here are some additional thoughts, in no particular order:

500 priests

"500 priests" are dominating the news cycle here in the Chicago area.  Yesterday's Chicago Tribune front page, top-of-the-fold headline: "More than 500 priests accused of sexual abuse not yet publicly identified by Catholic Church, Illinois attorney general finds".  The 500 priests also were on the front page of our local suburban newspaper, and also were the main copy point of this story on the television newscast the evening of the report's release.

Who are these 500 priests?  They are priests about whom Illinois dioceses have received one or more allegations of sexual abuse - but the dioceses did not deem those accusations to be credible.  A few questions come to mind:

Are dioceses morally obligated to make public the names of accused priests, even if the accusations are not credible?   The implication of the headlines, which the attorney general's office surely wishes us all to draw, is that the church hasn't been sufficiently transparent in not publicly announcing the names of these 500 priests.  But if you ask the next 10 priests you meet whether the names of these priests should be publicized, I believe that 10 out of 10 would answer with a resounding "No!"  Public ministers are acutely aware of the importance of a good public reputation. 

In my experience, many priests live in day-to-day fear of a false accusation.  Parish priests, like all public figures, have disgruntled people in their lives, not all of whom are in good mental health.  Some priests don't find it difficult to imagine that a person who is malicious and/or out for a big payday could make a baseless accusation.  Perhaps that's not completely rational; to make a formal accusation of sexual abuse is not a no- or low-cost thing for an accuser - it leads to intrusive and possibly quite painful investigations, including by law enforcement, and the risk of being named in the media.

In my view, all persons, including Catholic priests, are entitled to their good name - so long as it's deserved, or at least so long as there is no compelling reason to deprive them of it.  We don't need to rack our brains to come up with the names of people whose public reputation has been unfairly destroyed; the first person who comes to mind for me is Richard Jewell, the poor guy who was wrongly accused of being the Atlanta Olympics bomber.  The church's Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (aka the "Dallas Charter"), heavily referenced in the Illinois preliminary report, states that clergy who are accused "are to be accorded the presumption of innocence" (Article 5).  Perhaps that presumption doesn't sit well with the prosecutors in the Attorney General's office, nor with victim advocates (whose influence seems discernible in the Illinois report), but it is a bedrock principle of American legal theory.

Are there reasons to make a cleric's name public, even if an accusation hasn't been sufficiently substantiated to be deemed credible?  There is the practical consideration that, when an accusation is made, the accused cleric typically is temporarily removed from ministry, pending an investigation; when that happens, something truthful should be said to the parish or the community to whom he ministers.  There is also the consideration that making the name public may spur other victims to come forward.   The Dallas Charter tries to balance these considerations when it notes, "Dioceses/eparchies are to be open and transparent in communicating with the public about sexual abuse of minors by clergy within the confines of respect for the privacy and the reputation of the individuals involved" (Article 7).  And turning again to civil standards as a point of comparison: my local suburban newspaper's "police blotter" coverage does not shy away from reporting the names of those who are arrested in this suburban area.

What is the track record of the dioceses in Illinois in establishing a threshold of credibility for accusations?  The Illinois report is pretty harsh on that score.  It's critical of the dioceses for not using consistent terms from one diocese to another, nor using the same terms uniformly, nor having a consistent set of standards for determining what constitutes the threshold of credibility.  (Whether the attorney general's office doesn't understand that each diocese is independent of the others, or simply chooses not to acknowledge that complicating factor, isn't clear.)  Among the reasons the report notes for dioceses either not substantiating an accusation, or not investigating it at all, includes: the priest has died or left the ministry; the priest belongs to a religious order rather than the diocese; the victim had filed a lawsuit; the victim wished to remain anonymous; law enforcement already had investigated; the priest had left the country; there was only one accuser.  (The report's comments on these reasons is in my original post, as well as the report).  Note that none of these reasons cited by dioceses are helpful in actually establishing the truth of the accusation by determining whether or not abuse actually took place.  The report also derides the dioceses for what the authors view as halfhearted or perfunctory investigations.  All in all, this section of the report calls into question the dioceses' commitment to discovering the truth and to protecting children.

Consequently, this section of the report is among the most devastating to the Illinois dioceses.  If the dioceses desire to protect the good names of priests with accusations against them which haven't yet been substantiated, they will need to convince the general public that their internal investigations are thorough and zealous on behalf of the alleged victim.  It's pretty clear that the attorney general's office doesn't believe that, of the 690 or so priests who have been identified to the attorney general's office, only 185 have credible accusations against them.  Neither do I.

The importance of the timeline

The inflection point (so far) in the history of clerical sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic church in the United States is May 5, 2006.   That is the date on which the Dallas Charter and its accompanying Essential Norms went into effect.  The provisions of child protection with which we've all become familiar - diocesan child protection offices, independent review boards, mandatory training of all staff and volunteers - date from that period.  During the prior decades, there was relatively little formal coordination of policies and procedures, and practices varied widely from diocese to diocese.

Today's standards, yesterday's cases.  Any accusations of abuse which were received by dioceses after 5/5/2006 are legally required to be handled according to the standards and provisions of the Charter and the Essential Norms.  Dioceses have no excuse if any accusations after that date were handled differently.  

But what about accusations that were received prior to that date - or prior to a diocese having its procedures aligned to the Charter and Essential Norms (some dioceses, perhaps most, had accomplished this prior to 5/5/2006)?  After all, records of abuse go back 60 years or more.  My view is as follows:

• All dioceses should reasonably have been expected to handle accusations in a responsible manner that prioritized the well-being of victims and safety of children, regardless of when the abuse took place or the accusation was received.  The Dallas Charter wasn't, or shouldn't have been, needed in order for church officials to understand these priorities
  
• As the Dallas Charter and Essential Norms weren't in effect and didn't even exist until the early 2000s, it's not always reasonable to hold dioceses accountable to the specific requirements of those documents for accusations that were received prior to that time period.  For example, the Charter and Essential Norms incorporate a zero-tolerance policy.  Prior to that time, there was no standard zero-tolerance policy in the church in the United States
  
• The Charter and Essential Norms reflect the social consensus that prevailed at that time (early 2000s) for how institutions should deal with accusations of child sexual abuse.  That social consensus has evolved over time, and it's a mistake to retroject that period's (or today's) social standards into previous time periods.  We might draw a parallel here with social views on racism.  On matters of race, what is respectable today is different than what was respectable in the 1960s, which in turn is different than what was respectable in the 1880s.  We can agree that today's views are morally superior to those that prevailed in prior periods; but it's difficult to hold historical figures accountable to today's standards
  
• Prior to the Charter and Essential Norms, the handling of abuse accusations were subject to whatever church law prevailed at that time, and to the judgment and policies of individual bishops and their administrations.

The Pennsylvania grand jury report may be criticized on the basis of retrojecting today's social consensus into history. Virtually all of the cases examined in the Pennsylvania report had (allegedly) occurred prior to the early 2000s.  Much was made in the media of the identification of 300 Pennsylvania priests; less noted was that, as a result of the grand jury's investigation, only two of those priests were charged with crimes (determining whether criminal charges should be brought being the primary function of a grand jury).  The others were passed over for criminal charges, either because the statutory time limit for filing charges had passed, or the accused priests were dead.  The Pennsylvania report was essentially a massive bringing to light of old accusations.

 Today, it strikes many of us as outrageous that priests who pretty clearly were abusers were allowed to remain in ministry.  But in, say, the 1940s, the phrase "zero tolerance" wasn't widely known (except perhaps in engineering circles), and I'm not sure how widespread the underlying idea would have been.  Statutes of limitations that prevailed then for the civil crime of child sexual abuse often were less than 10 years, which suggests that the church wasn't being notably more lenient than civil society at that time.  By the 1980s, the church's view of a responsible way of dealing with abusive priests was to send them out for treatment in an attempt to cure them of the tendency, or at least to help them manage the urges; if a psychology professional stated that a priest was fit to return to ministry, the priest frequently was reinstated at a parish or another assignment.  This approach was viewed as both scientific and merciful toward the offenders.   In retrospect, it was tragically flawed.  But it's difficult to assess how we should judge the decision-makers of that era when they lacked our retrospective view into their deeds and misdeeds.

Is this Illinois preliminary report vulnerable to this same criticism of retrojecting today's standards into other eras?  Probably.  The Attorney General's office has acknowledged that the cases that form the basis for the preliminary report span decades.  The Illinois report may be even more subject to this criticism, because it goes to some length to try to demonstrate that Illinois dioceses have not adhered to the standards that its own national conference has set (i.e. the Dallas Charter).  As the preliminary report doesn't provide any actual case synopses or other concrete details, it's impossible for the reader to verify the truth of that claim.  

A gap in the Charter?  But this consideration of old case files brings to light an interesting point about the Dallas Charter - and perhaps identifies a lacuna in the American bishops' policies:

The Dallas Charter's scope is as follows: it seeks to address current abuse, by establishing ways for victims to report abuse, dioceses to process the accusations, and discipline for credibly accused and guilty clerics.  It also seeks to prevent future abuse by establishing policies and procedures, awareness training, safe environments and other provisions intended to build up a culture of awareness, monitoring and prevention. 

But the Dallas Charter doesn't fully address past abuse.  To my reading of the Charter and the Essential Norms, there are no provisions that require dioceses to wade through decades-old files, revisit how the cases were handled, and take corrective and/or pastoral action where that is indicated.  According to the Dallas Charter, the only way the investigatory process is set in motion is when a victim comes forward to make an accusation in the prescribed way.  But we now know that every diocese has old files of many cases of accusations of abuse, for which the accuser had made an accusation prior to the era of the Charter.  Unless that accuser stepped forward again and directed her/his accusation to the independent review board, the board would not have a reason to investigate that case.

That is a gap - and one which the Pennsylvania Attorney General, and now his counterpart in Illinois, are exploiting.  The Illinois AG may also have hit upon something to exploit it even more: her office has established its own reporting hotline.  And it seems that people are using it.  The preliminary report states that it has received over 300 reports this way, many of which hadn't previously been reported.

To be sure, just because wading through decades-old files isn't mandated, that doesn't mean that dioceses can't decide to do it voluntarily.  If the American bishops care to listen to my advice, they would establish a national requirement that all dioceses must do a review of old case files, and publish the results of any credible cases.  Even though the accused offender may be deceased or in a nursing home, the victims often are very much alive and suffering from the effects of abuse that may have occurred decades earlier.  To the extent that public acknowledgement has any healing value for victims, I support it.

One final timeline-related consideration: it seems the 690 priests with accusations against them span decades of ministry.  What about the 185 priests with substantiated allegations against them?  Do they constitute only those who have passed through the Dallas Charter processes (i.e. investigation by the independent review board)?  Is it possible that the number with substantiated accusations would be considerably higher if the dioceses fed old cases to their independent review boards to consider?

What laws have been broken?

Have the dioceses in Illinois broken any civil laws?  The preliminary report doesn't say so.  In fact, it doesn't say much of anything about investigating crimes or charging offenders.  But charging and prosecuting crimes would seem to be the chief responsibility of any attorney general.  Granted that it's someone's job, within and/or without the church, to hold church officials accountable to its own internal standards, is it the job of the State's Attorney's office in Illinois?  

It seems fair to ask: to what end has this investigation been launched?  Perhaps I am overly cynical, but the first and most likely answer that comes to mind is: the results of this investigation would be used by the state government to justify the suspension of the statutes of limitations which prevent victims of old abuse crimes from pursuing criminal and civil legal remedies in court.  I've expressed, many times, my uneasiness with the practice of opening new statutory windows.  I hope it's clear from my remarks on this topic that I support transparency and truth-telling on the part of the church.  But that doesn't mean that any and all possible remedies are good ones. 

Politics

I noted in yesterday's post that state attorneys general are politicians.  The Chicago Tribune's article on the preliminary report noted something interesting in that respect: The Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, leaves office very soon - she chose not to run for re-election this year.  The release of this preliminary report ensures that there is something tangible accomplished on this topic on her watch.  Her successor, Democrat Kwame Raoul, has indicated he will continue to pursue the investigation.  By releasing this report now, Madigan has made sure that, when she passes the baton to Raoul, she doesn't hand off all the credit for this investigation.