Preventing Another Class of Victims

by Fr. Roger Landry - September 16, 2011

At the end of August, there was a sad story from Niagara Falls, Canada, that highlighted the vulnerability many priests feel about being falsely accused of sexual abuse. Robert Sammut, 46, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for extorting $90,000 from a priest against whom he had threatened to make a false allegation. Sammut first approached the priest in the fall of 2009 asking him for money, saying that he needed the money to support his kids as well as to pay off some people he owed who were threatening to hurt him. The priest — whose name was not revealed in court documents and whom the prosecutor, Graeme Leach, says is too embarrassed and traumatized to speak publicly about the matter — gave him the $30 he had. Sammut, who has admitted that he was a long-time drug addict with more than 30 convictions on his record, began to approach him regularly to ask for more money. After a few months of generosity, the priest said that he could help no more. That's when court documents described that Sammut began to threaten him that if he didn't give him cash, he would tell the police and the media that the priest had sexually abused him when he was a minor. Fearing that his reputation and his priestly livelihood would be destroyed by a false accusation, the priest succumbed, wiping out his personal savings, maxing his credit cards and borrowing money from friends and the Church to give to Sammut. The prosecutor said that the priest had always lived very modestly and on a priest's salary will likely never be able to pay back all he owes, a debt that will cause, the prosecutor added, the priest's "ongoing victimization."

Some might ask why would a priest feel so vulnerable against a false accusation, especially from a multiply convicted drug addict with obvious credibility problems. The answer has to do with how accusations have been getting handled in the United States and Canada since policies on accusations of the sexual abuse of minors were reformed in each country a decade ago. While the reformed policies are justly praised for all that they've done to protect children and to hold priest abusers canonically accountable, many priests say that the implementation of the new policies has left priests unprotected from another type of abuse and victimization: character assassination and ministerial destruction by false allegations.

Prior to 2002, the flaw in the Church's handling of accusations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy was not a fundamentally deficient policy (though some changes clearly needed to be made), but the failure to follow and enforce canon law and particular norms that already were on the books. Canon law has clear policies about how to handle accusations of the grave canonical delict (crime) of the sexual abuse of minors and bishops' conferences had generally adopted clear local policies detailing cooperation with civil authorities and other wise protocols; in many places, however, they weren't implemented. Rather, in many chanceries, a priest's word in denial of the accusation was all that it took to dismiss the word of a victim or a victim's family. Even when chancery officials believed that the victim was telling the truth and an abusive priest was lying, not enough was done in many cases to remedy the situation of injustice and abuse. Many chancery officials seemed regularly to be putting the "good of the institution" ahead of justice for victims and protection of other children.

Many priests — and the association of canonists, justiceforpriests.org — say a similar form of injustice is now occurring with regard to false accusations of sexual abuse against priests. Whereas in the past a potential priest abuser's word was often taken at face value, now, they say, a proposed victim's word is given the same weight, no matter what the priest says. Whereas formerly many Church leaders seemed to put the good of the reputation and finances of the institutional Church above justice for victims, now, they say, the same thing is happening with regard to the way priests are being treated: innocent priests are being sacrificed to show that Church's toughness on sexual abuse. And whereas previously it was not so much an issue of a "bad policy" but the way the policy was or was not being implemented, so today, they assert, the same problem persists. The only difference, they say, is that whereas once the Church did not do justice in many places for the rights of accusers, now it's not doing justice to the rights of the accused.

Right now, the practice in many dioceses is that when an accusation comes in, the accused priest is put on immediate leave before there is an adequate preliminary investigation. The accusation is treated as "credible" often merely by the fact that it "could have happened" rather than the likelihood that it did. The priest needs to leave his ministry and residence pending the investigation of a diocesan review board, an investigation that often drags on with inexplicable and inexcusable inertia: there are still several U.S. priests who maintain their innocence who were removed from their ministries back in 2002 whose cases have not yet been resolved. Even though the removal from public ministry, the vacating of the rectory, the incapacity to wear clerical dress and the other typical conditions of the leave of absence are not meant to imply that the priest is guilty, in reality it is the equivalent of a punishment given even before the veracity of the allegation is determined. No matter what is said to the contrary, it implies an assumption of guilt until innocence is proven, something that goes against canon law as well as the clear sense of fairness enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The press releases that many dioceses send out announcing the accusation — which often end up with the priest's name and face being associated with the abomination of the abuse of minors on the front page of newspapers and the top story on television and radio news reports — clearly injure the priest's reputation, some say irreparably. All of these factors conspire to make many priests think that if they are falsely accused of sexually abusing a minor, they will never recover.

Two wrongs never make a right. The just response to a failure adequately to protect sexual abuse victims in the past is not to make innocent priests another class of victims now through false accusations. This harms not only the good men who have sacrificed their life for Christ and the Church but also injures their parishes, chaplaincies, and in some cases, the faith of everyone who has ever known them and received a sacrament from them. What is needed is to defend the full rights both of accusers as well as the accused; to protect both children and priests from injustice and crime; to remove guilty priests from ministry expeditiously and ensure that innocent priests are expeditiously returned.

How to balance these sometimes conflicting rights and responsibilities in practice — especially when we're dealing with the solemn duties of protecting innocent children from harm and innocent priests from having their ministry destroyed by false accusations — is an act of Solomonic wisdom. In situations where abuse was probable, it's right to err on the side of validating the suffering of the likely victim and protecting other young people from potential abuse as the Church does its investigation by temporarily removing a priest with a truly credible accusation against him. It's wise as a matter of policy — since the Church needs to regain trust of Catholics and the general population to respond to the sexual abuse of minors as everyone would expect an institution founded by Jesus Christ should — to report every accusation to the civil authorities. But as a matter of protocol, more needs to be done to protect the legitimate rights of priests from being victimized by false accusations. This should begin with fully implementing the canonical requirement of a preliminary investigation, done by competent, experienced, trusted investigators, to ascertain the plausibility of the accusation. Tenable and untenable allegations must be treated differently; a priest should not be removed from his ministry if an accusation is ludicrous or demonstrated to be false during the preliminary investigation. A priest who maintains his innocence but against whom a truly credible allegation has been made should be entitled to a speedy investigation and trial not only by the civil authorities (when applicable) but also by the ecclesiastical review boards and tribunals. Everything should be done to protect a priest's reputation until guilt is admitted or proven, even if for the protection of children for a plausible accusation he has been temporarily removed. If the accusations prove unfounded he should not only be restored to ministry, but adequate remedy should be done for the injustice he has suffered.

Next week we will apply these principles of justice — the Solomonic balancing of what the Church legitimately owes to victims of clergy sexual abuse as well as those who might suffer it with what the Church owes to falsely accused priests — to the vexing topic of the publication of names of priests who have been accused of the sexual abuse of minors.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.