Abuse victims seek International Court investigation of pope

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit legal group, requested the inquiry on behalf of the Survivors Network, arguing that the global church has maintained a “longstanding and pervasive system of sexual violence’’ despite promises to swiftly oust predators.

The Vatican said it had no immediate comment on the complaint.

The complaint names Pope Benedict XVI, partly in his former role as leader of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in 2001 explicitly gained responsibility for overseeing abuse cases; Cardinal William Levada, who now leads that office; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state under Pope John Paul II; and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who now holds that post.

Lawyers for the victims say rape, sexual violence, and torture are considered a crime against humanity as described in the international treaty that spells out the court’s mandate. The complaint also accuses Vatican officials of creating policies that perpetuated the damage, constituting an attack against a civilian population.

Barbara Blaine, president of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by priests, said going to the court was a last resort.

“We have tried everything we could think of to get them to stop and they won’t,’’ she said. “If the pope wanted to, he could take dramatic action at any time that would help protect children today and in the future, and he refuses to take the action.’’

The odds against the court opening an investigation are enormous. The prosecutor has received nearly 9,000 independent proposals for inquiries since 2002, when the court was created as the world’s only permanent war crimes tribunal, and has never opened a formal investigation based solely on such a request.

Instead, prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has investigated crimes such as genocide, murder, rape, and conscripting child soldiers in conflicts from Darfur to this year’s violence in Libya. Such cases have been referred to the court by the countries where the atrocities were perpetrated or by the UN Security Council.

Also, the Holy See is not a member state of the court, meaning prosecutors have no automatic jurisdiction there, although the complaint covers alleged abuse in countries around the world, many of which do recognize the court’s jurisdiction.

“Politically, people do not want to look at this,’’ said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pam Spees before walking to the court with victims to hand prosecutors boxes full of documents.

But Spees conceded she was not hopeful the court would launch an investigation.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the evidence would be studied. “We first have to analyze whether the alleged crimes fall under the court’s jurisdiction,’’ it said.

Lawyers for the Survivors Network argued that no other national entity exists that will prosecute high-level Vatican officials who failed to protect children.

In the United States, no Roman Catholic bishop has been criminally charged for keeping clergy members accused of abuse in parish jobs without warning parents or police. Within the church, only the pope can discipline bishops.

The few who have been publicly punished by the Vatican have been sanctioned for molesting children, not for negligence in supervising priests.

“When a church has been left to its own devices it does nothing. It wouldn’t even have the reforms it has now if these cases hadn’t begun to bubble up and erupt in the public outside the confines of what the church can control,’’ Spees said.

The Survivors Network and victims are pursuing the case as the abuse scandal, once dismissed as an American problem by the Vatican, intensifies around the world.

Thousands of people have come forward in Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere with reports of abusive priests, bishops who covered up for them, and Vatican officials who moved so slowly to respond that molesters often stayed on the job for decades.

Vatican officials and church leaders elsewhere have apologized repeatedly, clarified or toughened church policies on ousting abusers, and, in the United States alone, paid out nearly $3 billion in settlements to victims and removed hundreds of priests.

Bishops insist they fully grasp the devastation that molestation causes to victims and the limits that dioceses must impose on abusive clergy.