The Vatican issued a report Monday by non-Catholic sex abuse experts who broadly criticized the policy adopted by US bishops of removing abusive priests from their ministry, saying it was overly harsh and counterproductive to protecting the young.
The report was released days before US bishops issue their own national survey on clergy sex abuse that is expected to find more than 4,000 American priests have been accused of molesting minors since 1950, far more than previously estimated.
Still, the study may also show that the number of cases has declined dramatically since the 1990s, and victims fear it could lead US bishops to ease their discipline plan. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said last week the US church remains committed to keeping offenders out of ministry.
Monday's report published by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life may fuel victims' concerns because it compiles assessments by independent, non-Catholic psychiatrists and psychologists -- albeit those invited to contribute by the Vatican -- who say the US ``zero-tolerance'' policy is mistaken.
The 220-page report, Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: Scientific and Legal Perspectives, is a compendium of scientific papers and discussions presented by the experts during a Vatican conference convened last April to give the church hierarchy advice on how to handle the crisis.
Neither the Vatican nor the experts drew final conclusions, but there were areas of agreement. As reported last week, one was in the widespread criticism by the experts of the 2002 US zero-tolerance policy that says an offending priest can be permanently removed from ministry -- and possibly from the priesthood itself -- for even a single act of abuse.
Many US dioceses say they are aggressively pursuing zero-tolerance policies after being stung by charges that the church hierarchy was trying to protect abusive priests, often by shuffling them from parish to parish.
The experts said a zero-tolerance policy was mistaken and even dangerous. Most agreed that such a policy can actually increase the chances that offenders might strike again because it removes them from supervision and from the only jobs they have known for decades.
"[Zero-tolerance] does not function to prevent these crimes," Hans-Ludwig Kroeber, head of the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Berlin, told the conference. "It is better to domesticate the dragon; if all you do is cut off its head, it will grow another."
Another conference participant, William Marshall of Canada, a former president of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, said such a policy sends the message that the church doesn't care about the offender or believes he can't be rehabilitated -- "neither of which are good messages for the church to communicate to others."
He cautioned that such a severe penalty may even discourage victims from coming forward.
The experts all agreed that offenders need treatment, as well as face possible criminal penalties.
Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Academy for Life, told the conference that he thought that after punishing and treating an offender, it was necessary "not to abandon him or consider him useless to the church, but rather for the common good of society, return him to a meaningful role in the church."
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