By Ted Slowik
It's the worst possible label to pin on an innocent person. Better to be called a thief, a liar, maybe even murderer, anything but child molester. Once you've been accused -- even if the claim turns out to be completely fabricated -- some people will never look at you the same way again.
Today we learn that the Rev. Richard L. Bennett, who has served at two Naperville parishes, is fully reinstated in good standing after being named in a lawsuit filed in 2004. The suit has been dismissed, the claims have been deemed not credible, and Bennett is free from supervision.
In a way, innocent priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse are additional victims of a system that for decades -- centuries, even -- shielded molesters and protected predators. There's no disputing what has come to be accepted as fact: that many Catholic Church leaders over the years transferred pedophile priests to other places where they had continued access to children without warning the new parishioners of past accusations. They thwarted attempted criminal investigations by refusing to cooperate with authorities. They bullied and intimidated victims and their families into remaining silent. Given the more than $1 billion paid in claims to sex abuse victims and the four or five dioceses that have declared bankruptcy, I'd say it's pretty much a given that the Catholic Church -- at least legally and financially -- has fessed up to a lot of bad decisions, especially during the 1970s and 1980s.
So I do feel bad for innocent people falsely accused of sexual abuse. Someone who fabricates a claim against an innocent person must be completely devoid of conscience, in order to totally disregard the permanent consequences of such a claim. But consider this: part of the fault also falls upon church leaders who created an environment where actual sexual abuse flourished for years.
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