Seven key facts about the Vatican, the Pope and child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy

6. What is new in the Vatican’s April 2010 directions to bishops about reporting of child sexual abuse?
The existing church laws remain (the Motu Proprio sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela 2001, and the 1983 Code of Canon Law), and despite some claims to the contrary by Church figures, neither law requires bishops to report alleged cases to police. What has been emphasised as new is that the 12 April 2010 CDF Guidelines state that “Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed." This is the first direct statement of its kind about the duty to report crimes to civil authorities.

7. Is “following local civil laws concerning reporting of crimes” going to be effective, or even possible?
In part, but by no means completely.  To begin with, many jurisdictions do not have any civil law which requires a person who knows of a crime to report it in terms that are sufficiently clear and broad to require the reporting of all suspected clerical child sexual abuse. In Australia, for example, it is generally not a crime to simply fail to report knowledge or suspicion of it, and negligence law is not sufficiently clear or broad to impose such a requirement. Globally, it is possibly only a small minority of jurisdictions that impose a legal requirement to report even known cases of abuse, let alone suspected abuse. Interestingly, 20 jurisdictions in the USA explicitly require clergy to report suspected child sexual abuse, and a further 18 require all citizens to do so – therefore clergy in many States of the USA are required by law to report child sexual abuse. But, even in these cases, it requires the individual clergy member to comply with the law, and this is assisted by a culture of such compliance, and is likewise impeded by a culture of secrecy. So, even in jurisdictions where there is such a law, the Church’s organisational culture must demand compliance with such reporting duties.

In all jurisdictions without such a legal duty, this new instruction will have no direct effect at all. The Vatican must surely be aware of this and so cannot simply rely on this instruction as a sufficient measure to change practice and culture. What the Vatican should have done was simply to create a clear requirement that known and reasonably suspected child sexual abuse by clergy must be reported immediately to police. It should then have created appropriate procedures and arranged for the delivery of expert training to all relevant staff to enable compliance with this (which should be repeated over time to embed cultural and generational change). These actions, and much else besides, remain to be done to transform the Catholic Church into an organisation that deals appropriately with child sexual abuse.