Lock up rogue priests

By Gideon Kindiwa
VICTIMS of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church have been told to help jail the rogue priests.
PNG and Solomon Islands Catholic Bishop Conference president Bishop Rochus Tatamai urged the victims not to be afraid to report them.
He said sexual abuse by priests was a serious crime and perpetrators should be dealt with by the law.
Sex offenders should not be protected by the church, Tatamai said.
The Bishop of Kavieng shared insight of a recent sexual abuse summit at the Vatican in Rome.
He said most victims, especially children, were afraid or ashamed to report their abuse to the authorities because the church was a big service provider like the government.
“We should not see the services as important and cover the wrong doings of religious leaders,” Tatamai said.
“We should look at the credibility of the leaders and report them if they commit a crime.”
According to Pope Francis during the summit, the issue of clerical sexual abuse of minors and teenagers was a universal problem and so many victims had come forward with testimonies, and the media played a huge role in exposing the issue.
According to Tatamai, most victims in PNG do not report their cases because cultural barriers and respect for the church.
But he said that would not be the case anymore as senior members of the church had decided to expose and deal with the issue and were asking people to come out and report any issue of sexual abuse.
During discussions at the Catholic Bishops Conference at Gordon, Port Moresby, a participant raised a point on how the church in PNG should work towards eradicating the problem. After some discussion on the issue, Tatamai made two suggestions.
One was to impart proper psychological tests during the formation phase of priests in seminaries and the other was to create counselling centres or train more counsellors to help rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator.
Archbishop Douglas Young, from the Mt Hagen Archdiocese, said the social work programme at the Divine Word University in Madang trained good counsellors so the church should consider training counsellors through that programme.