Read the link for a totally disgusting experience:
Quote:
Only one of the 11 priests who have been publicly accused of sexual molestation has been prosecuted, and that involved a police agency outside of Delaware.
In Delaware, the diocese appeared to have a "gentlemen's agreement" with prosecutors about priests who got into trouble with the police, said the Rev. Thomas J. Peterman, an unofficial historian for the diocese who wrote a book that listed the priests who have served in Delaware since the diocese was founded in 1868.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, Peterman said, it was understood by diocese priests that colleagues who were accused of sexual abuse were not investigated by police in Delaware. Instead, they would be sent to places like St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md., for psychological treatment. Afterward, the priest would not be allowed to return to Delaware, Peterman said. Instead, he would be assigned to a parish on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Peterman said he could recall at least one priest working in New Castle County who was reassigned under that "gentlemen's agreement." He declined to name the priest.
Taggart, the retired vicar general for the diocese, denied that such an unwritten bargain existed, as did former prosecutors in Delaware who served in the 1970s and 1980s.
However, former Attorney General Charles M. Oberly III said that it is possible such an unusual arrangement could have affected how such molestation cases were handled in the 1950s and the 1960s, when the office was still small and child sexual abuse claims were rare -- especially those made against the clergy.
"In the 1950s and 1960s things were totally different," said Oberly, who was Delaware's top prosecutor from 1982 until 1994. "Is it possible a case could be swept under the rug? Certainly."
Diocese kept abuse cases secret
