Bishops told pedophiles lie, victims must be heard

ROME — Psychologists told bishops from around the world Tuesday that priests who rape and molest children usually lie when confronted with an accusation, and that the church should listen to victims since they usually tell the truth and need to be believed in order to heal.

The messages were delivered at a Vatican-backed symposium on clerical sex abuse that is aimed at compelling bishops to create tough policies to protect children and root out pedophiles from the priesthood.

Survivors of clerical abuse have long said that when they summoned the courage to denounce their abuser to church leaders, bishops often dismissed their accusation and instead accepted the word of their priests, whom bishops consider their brothers and sons in the priesthood.

That pattern led to decades in which bishops shuffled pedophiles from parish to parish, while victims were left to feel like they were to blame for the abuse.

Marie Collins, who was assaulted as a 13-year-old by a hospital chaplain in her native Ireland, told the bishops that dynamic led to multiple hospitalizations later in life for anxiety and depression. She told her story of abuse and how the church's response to it — refusing to believe her and taking the word of the priest — devastated her.

"I was treated as someone with an agenda against the church, the police investigation was obstructed and the laity misled. I was distraught," she said.

Eventually, civil authorities prosecuted and jailed the priest, and he has been imprisoned two more times for molesting other children.

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist who for a decade ran a U.S. treatment center for abusive priests, told the conference Tuesday that just like alcoholics or drug addicts, sexually abusive priests lie when confronted with allegations. They manipulate, they con, they deny.

"There are false allegations to be sure," and it's critical to restore a priest's good name when he has been cleared," Rossetti said in his prepared remarks. "But decades of experience tell us that the vast majority of allegations — over 95 percent — are founded."

As a result, he said, trained civil authorities, not bishops, should determine whether an allegation is well-founded. Even if prosecutors don't proceed with a criminal case, either because too much time has passed or evidence is lacking, bishops should form an advisory panel of law enforcement, mental health and canon law experts to investigate and decide how to proceed, Rossetti said.