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  Remarks Anger Sex Abuse Victims
Senator Blamed Liberalism for Scandal

By Brett Lieberman
The Patriot-News [Washington DC]
July 17, 2005

WASHINGTON - Patricia Anne Cahill was 5 when a priest near her Ridgewood, N.J., home began molesting her.

The sexual abuse continued until she was 13.

"The nun that I went to for help and guidance when I was 15, she took me under her wing and into her bed," Cahill said.

"Nobody stopped her then and nobody takes any responsibility in the communities and congregations," Cahill said.

Now 52, and the co-leader of an abuse victims' support group chapter in Lancaster, Cahill was angry when she heard last week that Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., blamed "liberalism" for the Catholic church's sex abuse scandal.

"I'm irate over it," said Cahill, who lives in Lancaster County.

"To me it just feels like one more calculated attempt at getting the public's attention once again de-focused from where it should be -- on the lack of restorative justice being offered to the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and Catholic nuns."

Santorum's comments from a 2002 column written for Catholic Online resurfaced last week after The Boston Globe reported on his remarks and that he was not backing away from them.

"Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture," Santorum wrote in the then-overlooked column. "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg agreed that a permissive society likely contributed to the abuse scandal but said Santorum oversimplified a complex issue the church is still seeking to fully understand and address.

"Perhaps he was inarticulate in hindsight, but I think the theme that he was getting at -- that is a libertine society in general has added to this and helped foster this very serious problem," said Bob DeSousa, the chief executive officer of the Vartan Group and an officer of the Harrisburg diocese's St. Thomas More Society.

DeSousa, a former state inspector general for Gov. Tom Ridge, doesn't believe Santorum meant to be political or insensitive to victims.

But victims of sex abuse are outraged. They said it was the church's culture to hide the issue, not a liberal culture, which allowed decades of widespread abuse.

"It gives you such a hopeless feeling when you hear someone who so profoundly misunderstands the issue," said John F. Salveson, an abuse victim who serves as a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests Philadelphia chapter.

Salveson, 49, was 13 when a priest began abusing him. He reported the abuse in 1980, when he was 24. The diocese moved the priest from parish to parish over the next nine years, he said.

Salveson and other abuse victims said they have yet to hear from Santorum.

They are angry at Santorum's "ignorance," and they also are frustrated over how the issue has been politicized.

Late Friday, the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation wrote Santorum seeking an apology for his "outrageous, erroneous and insensitive comments made about victims of abuse in our homestate."

The letter from the 12 lawmakers -- all Democrats -- called his comments an attempt to "score cheap political points with far right political groups" that only exacerbates victims' pain.

Santorum spokesman Robert Traynham said they had not seen the letter but Santorum stands by his comments and accuses Democrats of attacking him because he faces a tough election next year.

Salveson said neither Santorum nor Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., has shown leadership on the issue.

"What if it was discovered that in our public school systems teachers were sexually abusing kids and district superintendents were moving the teachers around so they wouldn't get caught and this went on for 50 years? ... Do you think there would a hearing in the United States Senate or the House of Representatives?"

 
 

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