BLOG

In the audience will be 200 men who are survivors of sexual abuse.  One of the themes of the show is that sexual abuse of boys is a much larger problem than most realize.  According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, it is estimated that one in six boys will experience an episode of sexual abuse before his eighteenth birthday.  Most are abused by either a family member or someone outside of the family whom they know and trust.

An recent op-ed authored by Martha Escutia discussed the case of Fr. Alejandro Castillo, a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ontario, California accused of abusing a minor parishioner.    The case of Fr.  Castillo now reads as an eerily familiar pattern of failure in properly handling credibly accused priests among clergy and an avoidance of the justice system.   News released yesterday announced that Castillo, charged with molesting a 12-year-old minor parishioner, won a reduced bail, from $1million down to $300,000.  Prosecutors argued in vain to the judge that Castillo is a flight risk, as he has family in Mexico, and still poses a danger to children. 

Last Friday, a judge in San Diego ordered the Diocese of San Diego to release over 10,000 documents detailing the Diocese’s failings in its handling of child sexual abuse by its clergy.   The documents come from personnel files of individual offending priests credibly accused who were known child abusers yet were moved from parish to parish, diocese to diocese, and often never removed from ministry.   We commend the court for ordering these documents released, but we do so with regret that this order did not come sooner.   Over the years that the church was..