The Vatican’s record on child abuse was criticized today at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Highlighting the Vatican’s repeated and ongoing efforts to cover up evidence of child abuse by priests, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) accused the Vatican of violating its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Keith Porteous Wood, who presented IHEU’s statement to the Human Rights Council, said: “Billions of dollars and euros have already been paid out in respect of thousands of victims in the USA and Ireland. News of further abuse has since appeared in Austria, the Netherlands and now Germany – and this is just the tip of the iceberg. How much more evidence of children’s suffering is needed before the UN fulfils its responsibility to hold the Vatican to account?

“The Vatican is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), but has contravened several of its articles, and is over a decade behind in its reporting. It has facilitated repeat offending by shielding child abusers from prosecuting authorities and shifting them to new communities. Major investigations in the USA and Ireland have been obstructed by the Church. All this has led to abusers being allowed to continue offending and escaping justice, while their victims despair -- some even committing suicide.”

The Vatican was first criticized at the UN Human Rights Council by IHEU in September 2009. “When we raised this issue at the UN last year, the Church blamed everyone else, but promised a paltry one paragraph on clerical abuse in its report to the UN,” said Porteous Wood. “That mandatory report, already 12 years overdue and promised last September, has still not been filed with the UN.”

In its statement at the Human Rights Council, the IHEU called on the Vatican to make three major changes in dealing with investigations into priestly child abuse:

   1. To bring the territory of Vatican City state, to which it has instructed all abuse accusations are to be sent, under the jurisdiction of the CRC;

   2. To open up its files and records to CRC and state investigators; and

   3. To instruct all its representatives to cooperate with legal investigating authorities worldwide.