The ‘Church’ in the headline is the US Catholic church and I think by now nobody thinks they were open and honest with regard to clergy sex abuse over the last few decades.
After a 13-year-old boy reported in 1979 that a priest raped him and later threatened him at gunpoint to keep quiet, the Archdiocese of Chicago assured the boy's parents that although the cleric avoided prosecution, he would receive treatment and have no further contact with minors.
But the Reverend William Cloutier, who already had been accused of molesting other children, was returned to ministry a year later and accused of more abuse before he resigned in 1993, two years after the boy's parents filed a lawsuit.
Officials took no action against Cloutier over his earliest transgressions because he 'sounded repentant', according to internal archdiocese documents released on Tuesday that show how the archdiocese tried to contain a mounting scandal over child sexual abuse."
I think it is reasonable to expect that this is the approach used by the Catholic church worldwide.
