Yesterday saw an important event in political/religious/legal history: a complaint brought to the International Criminal Court to arraign top Vatican officials for crimes against humanity for the coverup of sexual abuse inside the Catholic church. Note that the Center for Constitutional Rights worked with a Catholic victims’ group. Beautiful.
Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times:
Human rights lawyers and victims of clergy sexual abuse filed a complaint on Tuesday urging the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate and prosecute Pope Benedict XVI and three top Vatican officials for crimes against humanity for what they described as abetting and covering up the rape and sexual assault of children by priests.
The formal filing of nearly 80 pages by two American advocacy groups, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, was the most substantive effort yet to hold the pope and the Vatican accountable in an international court for sexual abuse by priests.
“The high-level officials of the Catholic church who failed to prevent and punish these criminal actions,” the complaint says, “have, to date, enjoyed absolute impunity.”
From CCR’s facebook page:
Dear CCR friends,
On September 13, 2011, a survivor-led support group for clergy sex abuse victims formally urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to investigate the Vatican for crimes against humanity. Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, together with their attorneys from the human rights organization the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), filed a lengthy and detailed complaint charging that Vatican officials tolerate and enable the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world. Together with the complaint, they submitted more than 20,000 pages of supporting materials consisting of reports, policy papers, and evidence of the crimes by Catholic clergy committed against children and vulnerable adults.
And remember that CCR has taken a very progressive unapologetic stance on human-rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. The importance of this case is that corrupt religious hierarchies cannot shield themselves from international law because they’re churchy. And does this signal a day when Jewish religious groups will be held accountable– in some manner anyway– for their stiffnecked support for what even longtime Israel supporter Stephen Robert has called apartheid? Yes.
