Though the edict includes some recommendations made by victims groups to summit organizers last month, some measures were not feasible, Francesco Zanardi, the president of Rete L’Abuso, the first support group for clerical abuse survivors in Italy, said in a statement.
Mr. Zanardi welcomed, for example, the establishment inside the Vatican of a structure that would provide medical and psychological help to abuse victims, but wondered whether they had to travel to the Vatican to get the support. “This is unacceptable,” he said.
The law also says “vulnerable people” — including the sick, people with a physical or mental disability, and people with limited personal freedom — are entitled to the same protection as minors.
“It’s an important clarification because it extends to adults who might not be able to resist abuse because they are in situations where they are in positions of inferiority to their superiors,” said Gerard O’Connell, a journalist who has long covered the Vatican. It could also extend to clerics who sexually abuse nuns.
Critics, though, pointed to what they said was a major gap in the law — the failure to enact what Peter Isely, a survivor from Milwaukee and a founding member of the group Ending Clergy Abuse, which gathers victims from 17 countries, called “zero tolerance.”
“Any priest that has been determined to have abused a minor must be removed permanently form ministry and, we think, then laicized,” said Mr. Isely in a telephone interview.
Nor did the pope remove the statute of limitations for reporting crimes. Instead, the new law sets it at 20 years from reaching adulthood. “We know that for victims of abuse, reporting is delayed, well past the age of 38 for most victims,” Mr. Isely said.
“It’s not true that this is the most advanced law of its kind,” he continued. “The danger is presenting this as the model and as the most advanced and complete model for bishops around the world.”
Source : Nytimes
