Clergy Abuse Victims Want UN to Investigate Vatican

Pope violates international charter on children, they say. At least twice, Holy See has failed to submit required reports.


Pontiff's one report ignored church's own clergy sex crimes & cover ups, SNAP says Thousands of predator clergy pose current threat to children worldwide, group believes



What

At a news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will call on the United
Nations to launch a investigation into the role of Pope Benedict and
Vatican officials in the widespread cover-up of sex crimes against
children. Victims also want the U.N. to take action for the Pope's refusal
to submit required reports as a signatory of the U.N. Charter on the
Protection of the Rights of Children.



When

Monday, April 14, 1:30
Where

In New York City, Millennium UN Plaza Hotel, One United Nations Plaza,
44th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenue) (The Governor's Room, 2nd floor)


Who

Several clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters, including a
Chicago woman who heads a self-help support group called SNAP, the
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org).


WHY


On Friday, April 18, Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to speak before the
United Nations yet the Vatican continues to violate a major UN Charter on
the Protection of the Rights of Children, of which the Vatican is a
signatory.


The widespread sexual abuse of children and the cover up of child sex
crimes by church officials poses a major global human rights threat to
children. In the U.S. alone, nearly 6,000 sex offender clergy have been
acknowledged by church officials to have sexually assaulted children. If
this number holds worldwide, there are likely 20,000 sex offender clerics
around the globe.


In a letter being sent to UN officials today, leaders of SNAP are
calling on the United Nations to launch a full-scale, global investigation
into the commission and cover up of sex crimes against children by Catholic
clergy, bishops and church officials around the world.


Victims are concerned that Pope Benedict, who will undoubtedly chastise
nations this week for human rights violations, is administering a world
wide institution in which human rights violations against children are an
historic, ongoing and daily occurrence.


Under his leadership in the Vatican for the last 27 years - as Pope and
formerly as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith -
thousands of predator priests have raped, sodomized and sexually brutalized
thousands of children.


Countless church officials who kept silent about the crimes -- or
actively concealed them -- have neither lost their jobs or faced reprimand
by the Pope.


National and international criminal authorities have had little, if
any, cooperation from church officials in stemming the tide of child sex
crimes by clerics, or have been notified when church officials transfer
known pedophiles across international boundaries.




SOURCE; Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests; SNAP