Vatican Hotline Outrage

The Catholic Church’s move to open a hotline to report sex abuse has infuriated victims who say it’s another ploy to keep the church’s darkest secrets under lock and key.

The Roman Catholic Church is the last place victims of predator priests should turn to. That, according to victims, is how the church got into this mess in the first place. And it’s why victims’ groups are outraged by a new church-sponsored hotline for victims to report alleged crimes.

“Victims should tell loved ones and police first,” said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. “Calling the church should be a last resort.”

The church does not agree. On Tuesday, days after SNAP inaugurated a new support group for church abuse victims in Pope Benedict’s home country of Germany, a local bishop there, Stephan Ackermann, announced the creation of the hotline.

As the world’s Catholics celebrate the solemn Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday this weekend, the mother church in Rome is strategizing a complex defense to combat both the growing number of alleged victim accusations and a slew of new sex abuse lawsuits against the Vatican itself.

At the heart of the controversy is not the crime itself, pedophilia, but the cover-up by church officials. Hundreds of Catholics across Europe and the United States who claim to have been abused by priests as children have come forward in the last few months, each with a similar story. When they or their families told church officials about the sexual abuse, they either were accused of lying or they were asked to sign an agreement not to go to the civil authorities.

Leaders of SNAP warn that the hotline is not a useful outlet for victims and survivors of abuse. Instead they say it is a new layer of self-protective bureaucracy for the church to hide behind. “We urge victims to not call this phone number, for their sake and the sake of others,” the organizers of SNAP announced in a global press release. “Reports of abuse should go to the independent professionals in law enforcement, not the biased, self-serving staff in chancery offices.” More

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