One priest raped a girl who bore him a child. Another made his victim get an abortion in violation of church doctrine. And others preyed upon women and girls in their parishes for years with impunity.
The crimes — and their cover-ups by Catholic church leaders, such as Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the current archbishop of Washington — are presented in graphic detail in a landmark grand jury report that documents decades of abuse committed by hundreds of clergy in six Pennsylvania dioceses.
Many previous reports about sexual misconduct among priests have focused on homosexuality and pederasty, but the grand jury report delves into sex crimes against female victims and their consequences when pregnancies occurred.
The report notes four cases that occurred in the Scranton diocese in which bishops and other church leaders allowed predator priests to continue in the ministry. The leadership also used confidentiality agreements with settlements to silence the victims. In one instance, they provided tuition for a young boy to attend a school in the diocese.
Children fathered by priests are also victims of trauma and unrecognized by the Church, says Vincent Doyle, the founder of COPING, Children of Priests International. A psychotherapist from western Ireland, Mr. Doyle, 35, is the son of a Catholic priest, which he discovered in 2011.
“I was subsequently called to keep quiet and interestingly enough, not by one single priest but by members of the lay community,” Mr. Doyle said in a phone interview with The Washington Times. – READ MORE
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