[ad_1]
Last Monday, the Polish Catholic Church was released new numbers of complaints have been received about rape by their leaders.
In all, 368 petitions were filed with the Church between 2018 and 2020 in connection with the atrocities committed by more than 290 priests and other religious leaders. The cases date back to 1958 and 173 of them involve children under the age of 15, the legal age in Poland.
Following the figures, the head of the Catholic Church in Poland, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, apologized to the survivors and asked for forgiveness. While some survivors may appreciate this, it does not excuse the fact that the Polish church has come to this point late for many years.
This is the second time that the Polish Catholic Church has released such individuals. It did so for the first time in 2019 revealed that 382 members of the clergy were accused of abusing 625 children between 1990 and 2018. The church says 42 priests are mentioned in the entire list.
While this move is a sure sign that the Polish church is now involved in the matter, there are a number of problems with the statistics, including the fact that it has taken decades for the church to release them for the first time.
The Polish Church, on the other hand, has made these figures public and useful because it covers a wide range of issues, although it is widely accepted that cases of known violence are only part of the problem.
It usually takes a survivor 24 years to report the abuse he or she suffered as a child, for reasons including the victim’s shame, not realizing what happened to them as torture or fear of not believing.
Only a handful of religious cases in Poland are map made by human rights activists, who currently register more than 580 cases written by the media or that ended in a court decision. But even those who do appear in court are few in number, often because the survivors do not want to be re-filed in the courts where they can meet with their abusers.
But, beyond the church numbers, most recent ones are few. The church did not disclose the names of 292 members of the clergy who were accused of sexual misconduct, even though they considered it to be “trustworthy”.
This seems to be a ploy supported by the pope himself in defense of the “good name” of the priests. However, many dioceses in some countries have voluntarily issued this.
In a number of Polish cases, the church has said it has established “temporary measures” in which complaints are being investigated, including the temporary removal of defendants and the avoidance of children. But we know from other countries that such priests are often left unattended.
The church failed to report what happened to the 42 religious leaders who appear in the 2019 list again this week, in what appears to be repeated errors.
Hiding the name of the alleged perpetrator of the crime and confirming the allegations against him – which seems to be the norm in the churches around the world – shows that the Polish church continues to protect people who use it in order to protect their reputation.
In Poland, this apparent shortage stems from the way the church investigates complaints of violence. Thirty-three of thirty-three (368) were said to be unreliable and were therefore rejected. But how did these ideas come to be?
Of the 173 cases involving children under the age of 15, the church said 148 of them had been reported to police. Twenty-five others have not been named either because the defendants have already died or their claims appear to be untrue or are still being investigated. But when is the church filing complaints with state law enforcement officials? Shouldn’t she do that as soon as she finds out she is being raped?
In addition, what happens to violent incidents between the ages of 15 and 17? For unknown reasons, while the church’s 2019 report provides statistics on the age of this generation, the most recent only divides survivors into two age groups: under the age of 15 to 15 years.
Of the 174 cases of the latter group, 80% did not go to the police. One of the reasons is that older survivors did not want (yet) want to complain to the police, as is often the case. But where people between the ages of 15 and 17 are involved, the important thing should be to inform the authorities.
And why does the church not encourage survivors to submit their reports to the authorities from then on? Instead, church organizations are set up around the world to receive complaints from survivors, despite accusations of being racist and extremist.
For survivors who come here, to complain to the church means to bring justice to the same organization where they are being abused that may not have prevented or covered it.
In the case of the Polish church, the organization that continues to report a few of the abuses taking place in its walls proves unreliable. Apart from that, it is the same organization that refuses to participate in the Polish national investigation into the issue of child abuse, which it was difficult to obtain information from the Polish church.
The church is just starting to release statistics in 2019 because it was forced to do so, following public awareness of the issue.
This was mainly due to the 2018 Religious (Kler) film about church darkness, including child abuse, which disrupted box offices and became one of the most popular Polish films in history.
Then came the artwork Don’t Tell Anyone (Tylko nie mów nikomu) in 2019, which featured stories of survivors. It described in detail how the persecutors had been transferred from parish to parish and continued to have children, and how bishops forbade survivors and their families from doing what they said. More than 24 million copies have been viewed so far.
Following the release of these photographs, a survey revealed that about 90 percent of those polled acknowledged that church authorities were decrease, whereas 67 percent thought church response was adequate.
The actual failure of the church only reinforces the idea that the Polish church has arrived on the issue too late to maintain its legitimacy. The two information groups do not make the transition to an organization whose long-term communication strategy has been waiting for the event until it is too large to be ignored.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor of Al Jazeera.
[ad_2]
Source link
