Survivors of sexual abuse deserve transparency and support from the institutions tasked with protecting them.
Opportunities for closure can be particularly difficult to achieve when the abusers are cloaked in a powerful organization. Such is the case with the history of abuse by representatives of the Catholic Church in Washington.
Last year, the office of state Attorney General Bob Ferguson launched an investigation into whether charitable donations to Catholic churches were used to conceal sexual abuse in the Dioceses of Seattle, Spokane and Yakima. The Seattle Archdiocese (which includes parishes in Southwest Washington) sought to shield records regarding priests, citing the state’s Charitable Trust Act.
A King County Superior Court judge this month sided with the church, but that should not be the end of the investigation. Ferguson’s office should appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court, and legislators should explore ways to provide transparency while still protecting religious liberty.
As Ferguson has said: “The Charitable Trust Act contains an exemption for religious organizations, which is appropriate to protect religious activities. Our position is that it cannot be the case that the exemption is so broad that it protects a religious organization’s use of charitable dollars to cover up or even facilitate sexual abuses.”
There is, indeed, a thin line between religious freedom and the rights of the public. The separation of church and state is sacrosanct, but so is the need of the state to robustly investigate accusations of sexual abuse — and to prosecute such actions when the evidence warrants.
As the Seattle Archdiocese — and other religious and secular groups — have demonstrated, organizations can erect powerful roadblocks to the pursuit of justice. This is particularly true with a centrally organized operation such as the Catholic Church.
In 2016, the Seattle Archdiocese released the names of 77 priests and religious leaders found to have credible accusations of sexual abuse against them. As The Seattle Times recently wrote in an editorial: “Many of the employees were moved from parish to parish after allegations surfaced. Some had criminal records involving abuse but were hired or remained as employees of the archdiocese. Since then, there have been numerous lawsuits against the archdiocese claiming sexual abuse of students, including at least three over the past year.”
Whether charitable donations were used in the facilitation of such cover-ups seems relevant to the interests of the state — and to the interests of victims. While religious organizations must be afforded great leeway to manage their affairs, sexual abuse is clearly beyond the scope the faith mission. And the possible use of charitable donations to protect the church from public embarrassment likely would be anathema to people who provided the donations.
Meanwhile, the Legislature should take the reasonable step of requiring clergy members to be mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect. Lawmakers have passed legislation removing the statute of limitations on civil claims for child sexual abuse, and they should provide further protections.
The concern, of course, is that a particular religious organization will face specious legal investigations motivated by bigotry rather than a quest for justice. But that risk must be reasonably weighed against the need to protect victims of sexual abuse and to hold even the most powerful organizations accountable.
