OTTAWA — When Bishop Raymond Lahey goes to trial on child pornography charges May 4, the likely news coverage will reopen wounds caused by the worldwide clerical sexual abuse, regardless of the trial's outcome. But observers say the pain provides an opportunity for needed renewal. The former bishop of Antigonish was charged with possession and distribution of child pornography in October 2009.Lahey's arrest followed the September 2009 seizure of his laptop and other electronic equipment upon his arrival in Ottawa airport in September 2009 by Canadian Border Service agents, upon his return to Canada from overseas. The bishop had completed a multi-million dollar settlement for clerical sexual abuse victims in his diocese a month earlier, a package widely hailed by victims' groups as generous and compassionate. Lahey has been living in a residence for retired priests in the Ottawa Archdiocese since October 2009.
"The first thing is that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty and we should not jump to conclusions," said Father Frank Morrisey, a canon lawyer who has advised the Canadian Church on the clerical abuse crisis. But Morrisey said in the present climate, with zero tolerance policies concerning sexual abuse, anyone who is accused is deemed "already guilty." "It just makes it difficult for a person to have an objective trial no matter who that person is," he said.
"When the trial is in the public eye, and it will be, it will once again make the pain and distress of this issue more visible and more real," said Sister Nuala Kenny. Kenny, a retired pediatrician who has advised the Canadian Church on the sexual abuse scandal since it first broke two decades ago in Newfoundland, declined to comment directly on Lahey's case. "I think we're still as a Church kind of reeling from the magnitude of offences and allegations against priests and bishops," Kenny said. "When it becomes public again all of the raw surfaces are exposed again. It's not because, for most, that the pain is not there all of the time."
Sources include
http://wcr.ab.ca/WCRThisWeek/Stories/tabid/61/entryid/880/Default.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Lahey
http://www.antigonishdiocese.com/title.htm
http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/menu-eng.html
http://www.theinquiry.ca/Morrissey.hide.php
http://www.ustpaul.ca/index.php?mod=employee&id=283
http://www.chac.ca/homepage/bio_nuala_kenny_08.pdf
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