SOME SAY VICTIMS SHOULD SKIP PURSUING JUSTICE FROM THE CHURCH
But even in the US, victims and canon lawyers say the system isn’t working, and that’s not even taking into consideration the new frontier of abuse cases involving adult victims. Some call it “charter fatigue,” that the hierarchy simply wants to move on beyond the scandal that spawned the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
The Rev. Tom Doyle, a US canon lawyer who worked for the Vatican embassy in Washington and now provides consulting for victims, says he no longer advises they pursue church justice.
Why? Because “the church will screw them every which way from Sunday,” he said.
“Don’t waste your time,” Doyle says he tells victims. “The only justice, or semblance of justice that has been meted out is in civilian courts because the church can’t screw them up.”
Nearly every investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church that has been published in recent years has identified the church’s in-house legal system as a big part of the problem, from church-commissioned reports in France and Germany to government inquests in Australia, parliamentary-mandated studies in Spain and law enforcement investigations in the US
While some reforms have occurred, including Francis’ lifting of the official secrecy covering abuse cases in 2019, core issues remain
Part of the problem is that canon law was never meant to address the needs of abuse survivors or to help them heal: As stated the penal code, the goal of the system is entirely institution-centric: to “restore justice, reform the offender and repair scandal.”
REPORTS IDENTIFY SPECIFIC ISSUES WITH CHURCH’S LATEST POLICIES
Even after the Vatican announced a revised penal code, more than a decade in the making, the outside reports were remarkably uniform in identifying:
—The structural conflict of interest built into the system. According to church procedures, a bishop or religious superior investigates an allegation that one of his priests raped a child and then renders judgement. And yet the bishop or superior has a vested interest, since the priest is considered to be a spiritual son in whom the bishop has invested time, money and love.
It is difficult to think of any other legal system in the world where someone with such a personal, paternal relationship with one party in a dispute could be expected to objectively and fairly render judgment in it.
The independent commission that investigated the French church’s abuse scandal said such a structural conflict of interest “appears, humanly speaking, untenable.”
Even the pope’s own Synod of Bishops came to a similar conclusion. In their November synthesis document after a monthlong meeting, the world’s bishops identified conflict of interest as an ongoing problem.
“The sensitive issue of handling abuse places many bishops in the difficult situation of having to reconcile the role of father with that of judge,” said the synod report, suggesting that the task of judgment be assigned to “other structures.”
—The lack of fundamental rights for victims. In canonical abuse investigations, victims are mere third-party witnesses to their cases. They cannot participate in any of the secret proceedings, they have no access to case files and no right to even know if a canonical investigation has been started, much less its status.
Only due to a Francis reform in 2019 are victims allowed to know the ultimate outcome of their case, but nothing else.
The Spanish ombudsman, tasked by the country’s congress of deputies to investigate abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church, said victims are often retraumatized by such a process.
“Despite the regulations enforced over the last few years, if we take into account international and national standards on the minimum rights of victims in criminal proceedings, the rights and needs of victims in canon law proceedings continue to be neglected,” the report found.
The French experts went further, arguing that the Vatican is essentially in breach of its obligations as a UN observer state and member of the Council of Europe, which requires upholding the basic human rights of victims.
Citing the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, the French report noted that a fundamental right includes access to a fair trial “which guarantees, in particular, the right of access to independent justice and an adversarial procedure, and, for the victim, the right to an effective remedy.”
“Canon law will only be able to provide a genuine response to the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable persons in the Catholic Church if it meets the universally recognized requirements of justice and if it is implemented more effectively,” the French commission concluded.
—No published case law. Unlike the Vatican tribunal known as the Roman Rota, which publishes redacted marriage annulment cases, the Vatican’s sex abuse office doesn’t publish any of its decisions about how clergy sexual abuse cases have been adjudicated.
That means that a bishop investigating an accusation against one of his priests has no way of knowing how the law has been applied in a similar case. It means canon law students have no case law to study or cite. It means academics, journalists and even victims have no way of knowing what types of behavior gets sanctioned and whether penalties are being imposed arbitrarily or not.