Pope Francis reassures the faithful: Only 2 percent of Catholic clergy are pedophiles

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63. You have NOT done much CYS work have you?

This happens all the time in the Public Schools system. You do not hear of it for when the victims come out, the school protects the abusers almost and at time better then the Catholic Church. Worse, when these do hit the court system, criminal charges tend to be minimal, just like in the Catholic Church for the victims either wait to long so any applicable Criminal statute of Limitations kicks in OR it becomes a he says, she says argument and such evidence is NOT beyond a Reasonable Doubt thus the Criminal Charge is dismissed.

In any Civil Litigation, the Catholic Church has a huge disadvantage, it has assets and can NOT claim Sovereign Immunity. Public Schools system yell Sovereign Immunity all the time. Sovereign Immunity is the concept that you can NOT sue the State for the State can do not wrong. You can sue the agents of the States or their sub-parts, but not the States or their sub parts themselves. Thus a victim can sue the teacher that molest them, they principal that covered it up, but NOT the school itself. When the Catholic Church is involved, the victim can sue the molester, the principal, the Parish Priest and the Bishop BUT ALSO THE DIOCESE ITSELF. It is the Diocese that has the assets to pay off a judgement, not the other defendants. The problem with Public Schools is the Public School System is exempt from the Judgment, you only get a judgement against the Victim, the School Principal, the members of the School Board, but NOT the School District itself. Since only the School District has the money to pay a judgement, Lawyers do not take these cases. Lawyers want to be paid, they get paid out of the Judgement when it is paid. The people defendants do NOT have the assets to pay the judgement so you have to look at the assets of the School, and when you deal with public schools, those assets are off limits.

Thus you do not hear of public schools being sued, for even if it can be proved that the victim was molested by a teacher and the School covered it up, the school itself will NOT have to pay for the harm done. Lawyers do NOT sue for damages against people who can never pay it for lawyers want paid.

Now, more recently the Boy Scouts have had similar problems and it is slowly coming out how much they covered up such incidents. The Boy Scouts have managed to avoid most litigation for the cover-ups have been at the local level only, or at least what has been revealed. The national Boy Scouts group is to coordinate local boy scout troops, but each troop is viewed as independent, Thus the National Boy Scout Troops can claim it is a different organization then the troop that employed a scout master who molested the boys in his troop. Thus such incidents have occurred in the Boy Scouts, but no where near the publicity of the Catholic Church, for the Catholic Church can PAY for the crimes of its priests, these other groups avoid paying for their local leaders crime by pointing out each troop is a separate and independent organization and each such organization does NOT have the assets to pay off the victims.

Just pointing out WHY you hear about the Catholic Church problems with these pedophiles and not other groups. The reason is simple, the Catholic Church can PAY for its Priests errors, but the other groups prefer to dissolve then fight such a lawsuit.

Now, let me say this. The Catholic Church has at least made an effort to address this problem, unlike other groups that have ignored them. Now, the Catholic Church did this in response to the various lawsuits they have lost but they have done something. Now most of what the Catholic Church has done will only be seen in 10-20 years, when the present series of lawsuits finally run they course AND the new rules reduce the number of such incidents (The Bishops have adopted a strict rule on removing priest who have been accused, even if there is no other evidence then one person's accusations). What the Bishops have done has been criticized by SNAP as not enough, but it is more then what other groups that deal with young people have done.