Why arent priests prosecuted

The revision put forward by Pope John Paul II to the entire code made it impossible for bishops to dismiss priests. Authority for doing so became centralized in the Vatican. At the time, the pope appeared to be responding to a wave of priests abandoning the priesthood. However, the change ended up constraining the bishops. They had to retain the abusive priests unless the latter were found guilty at a canonical trial and the Vatican — officially, the pope — agreed to dismiss them.

But they could not do so permanently. The code also reduced the maximum time within which proceedings could be initiated against priests having sex with a child to five years. With victims often, understandably, not coming forward for years, that meant many priests escaped internal punishment by the Vatican.

Canonical trials also require the cooperation of the victim as a witness and are another obstacle to holding priests accountable. The code has encouraged the very inaction by bishops that the pope condemns. There are no provisions in canon law that specify what is to be done if a bishop has failed to act on a case of suspected or actual child sex abuse.

Since , in a further centralizing move, the Vatican has required that bishops send all cases of substantiated allegations of child sex abuse to its Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is located at the Vatican, and is usually headed by a powerful Cardinal.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith may tell the bishop to conduct a canonical trial, may conduct one itself, or accept or reject a request for dismissal and apply conditions. Priests can appeal the verdicts and sentences. The Vatican sometimes overrules bishops who want to dismiss priests.

Although it is entirely within his power to do so, Pope Francis has not altered the Code of Canon Law with regard to clergy child sex abuse and how it is handled by bishops. For the church truly to hold priests and their bishops accountable for child sex abuse, this is an important step. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in.

A protest against clergy sex abuse. Warner , Arizona State University. In Arizona, victims up to age 30 can file civil claims. Most accused priests were named — either by dioceses or survivors — after the statute of limitation in their respective state had expired. That means the priest can often move on with their lives, taking new jobs and building new community relationships. In every state, residents can log onto their local sex offender registry and search for offenders in their neighborhood.

Supreme Court upholds power of executive branch to apply sex offender law retroactively. Many states and cities have passed their own laws and ordinances that restrict where registered sex offenders can live, typically barring them from being within , feet of places where children regularly congregate, like schools, playgrounds and day care centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Since most of the accused priests were never charged criminally or convicted, most do not appear on any sex offender registries.

The lack of a uniform process, handed down from either the Vatican or the U. But even then, loopholes in state laws allow many former clergy to keep their new jobs even when the history of allegations becomes public. Louis chapter. When the first big wave of the clergy abuse scandal hit Roman Catholic dioceses in the early s, the U.

A handful of canon lawyers and experts at the time said every diocese should be transparent, name priests that had been accused of abuse and, in many cases, get rid of them. Most dioceses decided against naming priests, however. And with the dioceses that did release lists in the next few years — some by choice, others due to lawsuit settlements or bankruptcy proceedings — abuse survivors complained about underreporting of priests, along with the omission of religious brothers they believed should be on those lists.

It was supposed to make the abuse scandal history. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who had tried to warn the bishops that abuse was widespread and that they should clean house.

After the charter was established in , some critics say dioceses were more likely to simply defrock priests and return them to private citizenship.

Now, within the span of a little more than a year, more than dioceses and religious orders have come forward with thousands of names — but often little other information that can be used to alert the public. Only a handful of the lists include the last-known cities the priests lived in. Over nine months, AP reporters and researchers scoured public databases, court records, property records, social media and other sources to locate the ousted clergy members.

That effort unearthed hundreds of these priests who, largely unwatched by church and civil authorities, chose careers that put them in new positions of trust and authority, including jobs in which they dealt with children and survivors of sexual abuse. Others landed jobs at places like Disney World, community centers or family shelters for domestic abuse.

And one former priest started a nonprofit that sends people to volunteer in orphanages and other places in developing nations. The AP determined that a handful adopted or fostered children, sponsored teens and young adults coming to the U.

Until February, former priest Steven Gerard Stencil worked at a Phoenix company that places severely disabled children in foster homes and trains foster parents to care for them. Stencil, now 67, was suspended from ministry in after a trip to Mexico that violated a diocese policy forbidding clerics from being with minors overnight.

Around that time, a year-old boy also complained that Stencil, then pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Casa Grande, Ariz. The diocese determined it was accidental touching, but turned the allegations over to police. No criminal charges were filed.

Copenhaver said Stencil passed a fingerprint test showing he did not have a criminal history when he was first hired part time by Human Services Consultants LLC 12 years ago. Stencil was fired from the company for unrelated reasons earlier this year. He later said in a post on his Facebook page that he was working as a driver for a private Phoenix bus company that specializes in educational tours for school groups and scout troops.

Others moved on as ministers and priests in different denominations, with new roles such as organist or even as priests in Catholic churches not affiliated with the Vatican, sometimes despite known or published credible accusations against them. In more than 30 cases, priests accused of sexual abuse in the U. The AP found that in all, roughly clergy members moved or were suspected of moving out of the U.

At least five priests were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church because of their refusal to stop participating in other religious activity. More than three decades ago, James A. Funke and a fellow teacher at a St. Louis Catholic high school, Jerome Robben, went to prison for sexually abusing male students together.

Funke, released in , was eventually bounced from the priesthood. But years later, the two men joined together again, promoting Robben as the leader of a church of his own making. Since , Missouri records show that Robben has listed his St. Louis home as the base for a religious organization operating under at least three different names.

Mary Kruger, whose son committed suicide when he was 21 after being abused by the men in high school, said she raised fresh concerns about Robben in when she heard he was presenting himself as a cleric. At the time, he was being considered for promotion to bishop in a conservative Christian order based in Ontario, Canada. Kruger said members of the order told her that Robben had dismissed questions about his abuse conviction, claiming he had merely rented an apartment to Funke and that police blamed him for not knowing what went on inside.

Robben eventually was defrocked from the Christian order, and apparently then started his own. Until last year, when its paperwork expired, the group was registered with Missouri officials as the Syrian Orthodox Exarchate.

Funke refused comment when approached by an AP reporter, and Robben did not respond to requests for comment. As early as , church officials knew of allegations that Roger Sinclair had acted inappropriately with adolescent boys. Two mothers at St. Sinclair played a game where he would shake hands and then try to shove his hand at their genitals, the mothers said in their letter, parts of which were made public last year as part of the landmark report in Pennsylvania.

Other accusations emerged about Sinclair showing dirty movies to boys in the rectory, exposing himself and possibly molesting a teen he had taken on a trip to Florida a few years earlier. After a group of mothers called the police for advice, the police chief told them he had heard the rumors but took no action, according to documents reviewed by the Pennsylvania grand jury.

The church sent Sinclair for treatment, returned him to ministry and provided him with a letter that listed him as a priest in good standing so he could be a chaplain in the Archdiocese of Military Services, according to the grand jury.

He was fired from that assignment in after trying multiple times to check out male teenage patients to go see a movie. He resigned a few years later, before the church concluded proceedings to defrock him. When he started serving on the board of directors of an Oregon senior center and working as a volunteer there, he was required to pass a background check because the center received federal dollars for the Meals on Wheels program.

But no flags were raised because he was never charged in Pennsylvania.