Child Sexual Abuse and the Churches: A Story of Moral Failure?

Some people may be puzzled, even angered, that the title to this article ends in a question mark. Surely we already know that the story of child sexual abuse in churches is a story of shocking moral failure. Story after story has appeared in the media in Australia in recent years of terrible sexual exploitation of children - and if that were not bad enough, reports of the cover-up of those crimes by superiors in the Church who, for whatever reason, chose not to involve the police or to act protectively towards children. These are not just Australian stories. In the Catholic Church at least, these patterns have been replicated in many countries across the western world, and it is perhaps just a matter of time before stories emerge from other countries that reveal the same patterns.