Media coverage of Catholic sexual abuse cases

The media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the pederastic priest scandal.

Some date the current sexual abuse scandal to an article published in the National Catholic Reporter in 1985.^[1] After that, the scandal remained at the fringes of public attention but did not become a focus of national attention until the mid-1990s when a number of books were published on the topic. The topic became a the focus of intense scrutiny and debate after the Boston Globe published a series of articles covering cases of sexual abuse.

John L. Allen, Jr., Vatican correspondent for the NCR, has commented that many American Catholics saw the Vatican’s initial silence on the Boston Globe stories as evidence of a lack of concern or awareness about the issue.^{[citation needed]} Allen described the Vatican's perspective as being somewhat skeptical of the media handling of the scandal. In addition, he asserted that the Vatican viewed American cultural attitudes toward sexuality as being somewhat hysterical, as well as exhibiting a lack of understanding of the Catholic Church.^{[citation needed]}

However, it was not until early 2002 that the Boston Globe coverage of a series of criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests thrust the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests into the national limelight on an ongoing basis.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} The coverage of these cases encouraged other victims to come forward with their allegations of abuse resulting in more lawsuits and criminal cases.^[10]

In 2003, the series of articles in the Boston Globe received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The Globe was honored, according to the Pulitzer website, "for its courageous, comprehensive coverage ... an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church."

Before the Boston Globe coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese, handling of sexual abuse allegations was largely left up to the discretion of individual bishops. After the number of allegations exploded following the Globe's series of articles, U.S. bishops felt compelled to formulate a coordinated response at the episcopal conference level.

In addition to matters regarding priests, the Boston Globe also reported in 2002 on matters with church staff, including a pastoral care and CCD worker, Paul Merullo, and a teenager, in Woburn, Massachusetts, which had occurred in 2000 but only made public in 2001. Merullo was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.^[11]

Criticism of media coverage by Catholics and others centred on an excessive focus being placed on Catholic incidences of abuse. Such voices argue that equal or greater levels of child sexual abuse in other religious groups or in secular contexts such as the US public school system have been either ignored or given minimal coverage by mainstream media.^[12][13] Commentator Tom Hoopes wrote:

during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government’s discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools.^[14]

In a May 2002 interview with the Italian-Catholic publication, 30 Giorni, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga claimed that Jews influenced the Boston Globe to exploit the recent controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests in order to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.^[15] This provoked outrage from the anti-Defamation League, especially since Maradiaga had a reputation as a moderate and was regarded as a papabile.^[16]

Anglican writer Philip Jenkins supported many of these arguments, stating that media coverage of the abuse story had become "..a gross efflorescence of anti-catholic rhetoric."^[17]

A number of books have been written, see List of books portraying pedophilia or sexual abuse of minors, about the abuse suffered from priests and nuns including Andrew Madden in Altar Boy: A Story of Life After Abuse, Carolyn Lehman's Strong at the Heart: How it feels to heal from sexual abuse and the bestselling Kathy's Story by Kathy O'Beirne, which details physical and sexual abuse suffered in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland. Ed West of the Daily Telegraph claimed Kathy Beirne's story was "largely invented", according to a book by Hermann Kelly, a Derry-born Irish Daily Mail journalist and former editor of The Irish Catholic.^[18]

The Magdalene laundries caught the public's attention in the late 1990s as revelations of widespread abuse from former inmates gathered momentum and were made the subject an award-winning film called The Magdalene Sisters (2002). In 2006, a documentary called Deliver Us From Evil was made about the sex abuse cases and one priest's confession of abuse.

Several other films have been made about sex abuse within the Church, including:

• Doubt (2008), based on the eponymous play
• Hand of God (2006), documentary filmed for Frontline^[19]
• Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006), documentary filmed for the BBC Panorama Documentary Series that purports to show how the Vatican has used Crimen sollicitationis to silence allegations of sexual abuse by priests.^[20]
• Our Fathers (2005), a Showtime movie based on the book by David France^[21]
• Twist of Faith (2004), an HBO film
• The Boys of St. Vincent (1992)
• Song for a Raggy Boy (2003)
• Bad Education A film by Pedro Almodovar.