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Church investigators can't be trusted

by Dennis Coday

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dcoday@ncronline.org

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March 19, 2010

Barbara Blaine of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) writes on the Ms.Blog the church should not be allowed to conduct an investigation into sex abuse allegations by clergy. She says church investigators can't be trusted.

Commentators use phrases like “tsunami” and “wildfire” to describe the Catholic sex abuse and cover-up crisis that is engulfing Europe right now. While the imagery is somewhat helpful, it obscures the origins of the scandal. Thousands of lives were not devastated by some unforeseen and unstoppable natural phenomenon; they were permanently scarred as the result of decades of deliberate and ongoing secrecy, recklessness and deceit by the self-serving Catholic church hierarchy.