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Victims of Church sex abuse go global with fight for justice

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AFP Paris
Last Updated : Feb 19 2019 | 12:15 PM IST

After years of struggling alone or finding support in national groups, survivors of sex abuse by priests have formed a new international alliance to pressure the Catholic Church to face up to its crimes.

The group, called Ending Clerical Abuse (ECA), brings together activists from dozens of countries on several continents, and will be mobilised in Rome this week when Pope Francis hosts a hotly awaited summit on tackling the wave of child sex abuse scandals shaking the Catholic Church.

"It's a momentous and a historic movement... to bring a global and unified voice," one of its co-founders, Peter Saunders, told AFP. "This is the first truly global initiative."
"In 2018, the court ordered him to apologise to me, but did not award damages," he said. "I have never had the apology." Lisinsky added: "The Church has ignored victims, moves the perpetrators around (from one parish to another) and refuses to meet with us despite the instructions from the pope. Officially it has apologised... but as an institution it has never accepted its responsibility."

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First Published: Feb 19 2019 | 12:15 PM IST

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