People who were raped and molested by priests are gathering in Rome
this weekend to launch a petition demanding the United Nations designate
systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.
Organizers
said the Sunday gathering would mark the first time that abuse
survivors from around the world will gather for a day of healing and to
demand greater accountability from the Vatican.
A few hundred people
from a dozen countries are expected.
Organizers had hoped to stage
the demonstration in St. Peter's Square, but said they had to move it a
few hundred meters (yards) away because the Holy See declined to give
them access.
Organizer Gary Bergeron, abused as an altar boy by a
Boston-area priest, said Friday the issue needs to be treated as a
global one.
"If it can happen in an institution like the Catholic
Church, it can happen anywhere," he told reporters at the Foreign Press
Association.
"If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone."
Bergeron
and co-organizer Bernie McDaid, also abused by a Boston-area priest
starting in the sixth grade, were two of the more prominent survivors of
clerical abuse to emerge after the sex abuse scandal erupted in Boston
in 2002.
In 2003 they met with the Vatican No. 2 in Rome and five
years later McDaid became the first victim to meet with Pope Benedict
XVI during the pontiff's trip to the United States.
Eight years
after the U.S. scandal erupted, however, they said the Vatican hasn't
taken sufficient responsibility, hasn't reached out to victims or put in
place universal prevention programs.
"We always realized this was a huge issue. We were ahead of the curve," Bergeron said. "The world wasn't ready to listen."
Now,
however, they said they wanted to start an awareness campaign since the
world has been sensitized to the problem following revelations this
year of thousands of victims in Europe and beyond, the bishops who
covered up for pedophile priests and Vatican officials who turned a
blind eye for decades.
"If this were any other corporation, heads
would have rolled and been fired immediately," McDaid said. "This is
totally unacceptable to me and a lot of others."
The pope has
admitted the church failed to take sufficient measures to stop the abuse
and has apologized to victims during several foreign trips.
He has
insisted victims were the church's top priority, although the Holy See
itself hasn't initiated any widescale outreach programs.
Some
60-80 deaf victims from Verona are expected to attend, spokesman Marco
Lodi Rizzini told The Associated Press.
The Verona victims have emerged
as one of the more horrific examples of abuse to come to light in Italy;
dozens have reported that they suffered rape and molestation by priests
while students at an institute for the deaf in the 1960s and 1970s.
In addition, victims from Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere are expected to attend, Rizzini said.
Organizers
plan to launch a petition asking the United Nations to designate
"systematic" sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.
Under
Article 7 of the U.N. treaty establishing the U.N. International
Criminal Court, a crime against humanity is defined as an act committed
as part of a "widespread or systematic attack directed against any
civilian population."
The statute lists murder, enslavement,
torture as well as "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution ... or
any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity."
"I'm not
here to change the world. I'm here to make sure my son isn't abused,"
said Bergeron, whose father was abused by a priest when he was a child
as well.
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