Catholic church instinct to deal with sex abuse itself has caused victims spiritual and physical trauma

The Church’s instinct to deal with sex abuse cases internally has been its most dangerous and common response to the crisis, according to a leading expert.

Fr Hans Zollner SJ, president of the Centre for Child Protection (CCP) at the Gregorian University in Rome, said a typical church response to abuse scandals had been "We will solve this internally as only we can really understand it”. This, he told the German Catholic news portal katholisch.de, had caused victims spiritual trauma on top of the psychological and physical trauma of abuse.

Fr Zollner identified the Eastern Churches as among the foremost in resisting the CCP’s safeguarding programme because they believed that clerical sex abuse occurred only in the "decadent, liberal Church in the West".

"They say, 'we, on the other hand were persecuted by the communists. Most of our priests were heroes. If one of them had abused minors the secret police would have found out and investigated'."

Nevertheless, Fr Zollner believes that the fact that the Church had operated in almost total seclusion in eastern Europe made it a danger zone for abuse. He said openness about the issue was also limited in southern Europe, where the issue often still came under Omerta, he added.

On perpetrators of abuse, Zollner warned that even after therapy the rate of reoffending was high.

"US theologian and psychiatrist, Stephen Rosetti, the pioneer among us therapists, says it means attending group therapy meetings week after week for 10 years and being unreservedly open – just as Alcoholics Anonymous prescribe. At every sitting the perpetrator has to talk about himself and his behaviour. Only then is there a hope that he won’t relapse," he said.

The Centre for Child Protection was getting hardly any support from theologians, Zollner complained. "There are so many urgent theological questions that need explaining, like the ecclesiological significance of clerical abuse. What does it signify for the Church’s self-image, for instance? What is the significance of a priest who is a 'man of God' and administers the Sacraments but is, at the same time, a perpetrator? Bishops are quick to pass such problems on to psychologists and canon lawyers but that is not enough," Zollner underlined.