Paperback: Any adult male - be he a bishop or a man in any other walk of life - who did not know long before this scandal became public knowledge that grown men having sex with children is wrong and insidiously harmful to children is either an idiot or a liar or both.
Beyond Belief (2010) is an in-depth exposé of the child abuse scandal and why the Vatican tried to cover it up. Part I is a verbatim reproduction of The Power and the Glory (2007). Part 2 continues the story up to the late summer of 2010.
The child abuse scandal revealed the dark heart at the centre of the Catholic Church, and yet it is only recently that Pope Benedict XVI has begun to acknowledge any blame. Since the papacy of John Paul II, there has been a continuous stream of revelations concerning the clerical abuse of children, and the initial denials from the Vatican have come to haunt them as the full extent of the abuse has come to light.
As of now, many people across the world would not allow an unaccompanied child to enter a Roman Catholic Church.
In two countries at least - there may be more - the unaccompanied child is safer than he or she has been for many decades. Those countries are England and Wales. The Nolan Report on child protection in the Catholic Church in England and Wales was a major breakthrough, published in April 2001 with more than fifty recommendations to protect the potential victims. The most important proposal of the report, one that was rapidly introduced, called for 'the creation of a national child protection unit within the Church to root out child abusers by vetting clergy, its lay staff and volunteers before they take up new posts'.
Another recommendation also swiftly implemented was the need for a annual public report. The historical cover-up and suppression of the truth of clerical abuse is a thing of the past in England and Wales. The figures for 2007, 2008 and 2009, however, confirm that we are far from an abuse-free society.
For 2007, a total of forty-six allegations were received that related to forty-four alleged abusers. These cases involved fifty-three alleged victims. Twenty-eight of these allegations related to clergy, a further four related to religious, with a further fourteen spread over a variety of categories: female religious, volunteers, employees and parishioners.
For 2008, there were a total of fifty allegations that related to fifty-one alleged abusers, thirty of these were priests, with unspecified numbers of religious, volunteers, employees and parishioners making up the remainder. Unlike in the vast majority of countries, the Catholic organisations in England and Wales quite rightly included alleged abuse cases allegedly perpetrated by people other than priests and members of the religious orders, thereby underlining the fact that sexual abusers are not drawn from just one section of society.
In 2009, there were forty-one allegations of abuse relating to forty-three alleged abusers and fifty-two victims. The various safeguards now in place in England and Wales have significantly reduced the risk of clerical sexual abuse of children but, as the figures above demonstrate, there is still a significant distance to go before the ultimate goal is reached. In a great many other countries, the situation is grim.
Beyond Belief covers many aspects of the issue: the history, the lies and the secret system of cover-up that reached the highest levels and implicated, among others, the late Pope John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI. The financial cost to the United States Church alone since the conspiracy began to unravel in 1983 is $6 billion, and rising. Over 10 000 accusations of abuse were documented in an official report and the Church has been forced to make compensation payments of over $3 billion.
The cost in Ireland is in excess of $2 billion. It will cost the rest of the world at least another $2 billion. The magnitude of the systematic abuse over seventy years has shown how even the head of the Church was involved in the protection of paedophiles.
The spiritual cost, however, is far greater. Sexual abuse of any kind by a priest is an act that, not just physically, but spiritually is nothing less than the rape of a victim. What follows will in parts not make for easy reading. Neither did it make for easy research and writing.
David Yallop, leading investigator writer and best-selling author, reveals the appalling level of abuse within the Catholic Church, giving a voice to the victims - past, present and future - and calling for the truth to finally be told.
About the author: David Yallop is one of the world's finest investigative writers. In the course of his career, he has investigated some of the world's most powerful and dangerous men, including Saddam Hussein; the Flight 103 bombers; the Colombian drug cartels; the Sicilian Mafia and the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal, often uncovering truths that they had wanted to keep buried. Every one of his books has exploded myths with electrifying precision. In 1984, the international bestseller, In God's Name, revealed the real story behind the death John Paul I and the extent of financial corruption within the Vatican. The Power and the Glory (2007) was the most authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the reign of John Paul II.
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