More than 150 members of the Catholic clergy are accused of acts of pedophilia “horrible and repeated” on at least 600 children, from the years 1940 to 2002 in Maryland, revealed Wednesday April 5 the American justice, denouncing the “complicity” from the church.
These priests and staff of the Archdiocese “engaged in horrific and repeated acts on the most vulnerable children in their community, while the leaders of the archdiocese turned a blind eye”according to a report by the prosecutor of this northeastern state.
This document concerns the archdiocese of Baltimore, very close to the capital Washington. It is the result of an investigation opened in 2018, as in many other states, following a shock investigation in Pennsylvania.
Some 156 members of the Church are identified there, suspected of pedophile acts on more than 600 children. But the real number of their victims “is probably much higher”note the authorities, who recall that only a small proportion of rapes are reported.
They insist on the “complicity” of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which “refused to consider allegations of child sexual abuse”. “When it became impossible to deny”the Church was content to move the people involved, to positions where they sometimes worked again near children, according to the prosecutor’s office. “The Archdiocese was more concerned with avoiding scandals or negative publicity than with protecting children. » This report, although official, does not constitute an indictment.
Archbishop’s apologies
In 2018, a Pennsylvania Attorney’s Office investigation uncovered child molestation by more than 300 “predatory priests” on at least 1,000 children, and covered by the Catholic Church.
This report had caused a shock wave in the United States, and many States had, in turn, discovered thousands of other victims.
For its own investigation, the Maryland prosecutor’s office relied on hundreds of thousands of documents as well as testimonies from victims and witnesses. The overwhelming majority of those implicated are named, but most of them are deceased and therefore cannot be prosecuted.
Following the publication of this report, Archbishop William Lori presented his “sincerest apologies” to the victims, admitting in a press release that these “diabolical deeds [avaient] occurred “. He promised that this “condemned period” of the history of this archdiocese would not be “neither concealed nor forgotten”. Of the “radical changes” have been decided since the late 1990s “to put an end to this scourge”he assured.