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Sexual Assault Awareness Month, observed each April, is a campaign that aims to increase awareness about the causes and risk factors for sexual assault, empower individuals to take steps to prevent it in their communities, and especially to inform minors of ways to be aware of sexual abuse and how they can protect themselves.
The New York Post’s headline on Jan. 18, “Vatican Orders Cardinal Dolan to Probe Bishop DiMarzio Sex Abuse Allegation,” immediately caught my attention.
Six of California’s Catholic dioceses – including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest – announced on May 14 that it was launching an Independent Compensation Program for survivors of clergy sex abuse.
A conference at the Catholic University of America (CUA) last week brought together clerical sex abuse survivors and over a dozen Catholic bishops for a daylong discussion on “healing a wounded family,” rather than on institutional reform.
Pope Francis told an American pilgrim taking part in World Youth Day that clerical sex abuse is a “horrible crime” and that “even if it is just one person, the Church should not tolerate it.”
The Boston Globe and the Philadelphia Inquirer newspapers teamed up for an article published in both daily papers Nov. 4 that examined ways it said the U.S. bishops have failed to police themselves even since their 2002 gathering in Dallas about clergy sex abuse when they “promised that the church’s days of concealment and inaction were over.”
The attorney general for the District of Columbia is the latest official to announce an investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church and said his office will look at possible abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Washington.
Despite news reports to the contrary, a Chilean court denied Monday that it’s reached a conclusion in favor of three victims of clerical sexual abuse who are suing the Archdiocese of Santiago for covering up abuses by former priest Fernando Karadima.
In a decision being hailed as historic, three Chilean survivors of the country’s most infamous pedophile priest reportedly have won a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Santiago. The court found two Catholic cardinals guilty of covering up for Fernando Karadima.
The Archdiocese of Washington has voluntarily released the names of abusive priests and stated that there have been no credible claims of abuse made against archdiocesan priests in almost 20 years.
