Report finds Catholic church in Kansas covered up sexual abuse of children by priests for decades
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation found that the church minimized child rape with euphemisms, protected priests accused of rape and supported clergy financially after they had been implicated in sexual assault.
In late 2018, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt asked the KBI to launch an investigation following the release of documents by Catholic dioceses in Kansas on allegations of sexual abuse.
The resulting 25-page summary report released by Schmidt’s office looked back 50 years. The KBI said it looked through more than 40,000 pages of records, fielded 224 tips, interviewed 137 victims and launched 125 criminal cases.
the KBI’s report said the agency had identified 188 clergy suspected of committing crimes — including sodomy, rape and child rape.
“The abuses revealed during the investigation had a profound effect on the victims, the families of victims and our task force members,” KBI director Kirk Thompson wrote in a letter to the attorney general accompanying the report. “Those victims, whose lives have been traumatically affected by what happened to them as a child, have shown hope, strength and perseverance in the face of extreme adversity.”
The report says church officials tended to use language that “minimized the seriousness or severity of actions and abuse” by priests. For instance, rather than say “rape,” church officials would say “inappropriate contact.”
“Rather than characterizing a priest as a criminal or rapist, they would soften the language and indicate the priest may have ‘boundary issues,’” the report says.
And for decades, the KBI concluded, church officials failed to report allegations to police and did only cursory investigations of their own.
“Even if the church substantiated that a priest was raping or sexually abusing others, including children, the church often continued to provide the priest housing and living expenses,” the report says. “In some cases priests were able to further commit additional child abuse.”
https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-01-06/rep...or-decades
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation found that the church minimized child rape with euphemisms, protected priests accused of rape and supported clergy financially after they had been implicated in sexual assault.
In late 2018, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt asked the KBI to launch an investigation following the release of documents by Catholic dioceses in Kansas on allegations of sexual abuse.
The resulting 25-page summary report released by Schmidt’s office looked back 50 years. The KBI said it looked through more than 40,000 pages of records, fielded 224 tips, interviewed 137 victims and launched 125 criminal cases.
the KBI’s report said the agency had identified 188 clergy suspected of committing crimes — including sodomy, rape and child rape.
“The abuses revealed during the investigation had a profound effect on the victims, the families of victims and our task force members,” KBI director Kirk Thompson wrote in a letter to the attorney general accompanying the report. “Those victims, whose lives have been traumatically affected by what happened to them as a child, have shown hope, strength and perseverance in the face of extreme adversity.”
The report says church officials tended to use language that “minimized the seriousness or severity of actions and abuse” by priests. For instance, rather than say “rape,” church officials would say “inappropriate contact.”
“Rather than characterizing a priest as a criminal or rapist, they would soften the language and indicate the priest may have ‘boundary issues,’” the report says.
And for decades, the KBI concluded, church officials failed to report allegations to police and did only cursory investigations of their own.
“Even if the church substantiated that a priest was raping or sexually abusing others, including children, the church often continued to provide the priest housing and living expenses,” the report says. “In some cases priests were able to further commit additional child abuse.”
https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-01-06/rep...or-decades
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
