The Church’s Sinful Secret
July 25, 2008 by grzegorz.piechota
Many priests knew about it, as did three bishops. For years, the horrible truth could not be revealed – an investigative story about how the Catholic Church covered up a child-molestation scandal in Poland.
The best read Polish daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza broke the story on its front page in March 2008.
Reporters Roman Daszczynski and Pawel Wiejas found that Father Andrzej, director of a centre for difficult young people in Szczecin, was accused of paedophilia a long time ago.
People demanding that the truth to be revealed had been hearing for thirteen years: do not act to the Church’s damage.
Reporters gathered confessions made by the wards of the St. Brother Albert Centre in Szczecin. One of them reads:
I came to the centre in 1992. I was fifteen. Father Andrzej asked me to his room. He started groping me, touching my genitals, encouraging me to do the same (I didn’t, I just lay there, helpless). He made me come. When I got up, he told me to hit him for hurting me.
The alleged molester was Father Andrzej, the Centre’s founder and then-director. The boys told their tutors, and they, in 1995, notified Bishop Stanislaw Stefanek, the hierarch in charge of educational matters at the Szczecin archdiocese.
Bishop Stefanek dismissed the depositions as non-credible and refused to talk to any of the boys. “I didn’t receive such orders from the Archbishop”, said Bishop Stefanek, today the bishop of Lomza.
Embittered, the tutors asked two monks for help. Bishop Stefanek’s superior, Archbishop Marian Przykucki, received them. ‘He told us he was sorry about the matter and would help to solve it’, one of the monks recalled.
You can read more about the case in English.
The full story was published on March 10, 2008, in Gazeta’s feature supplement Duzy Format.
Is the Golden Age of investigative journalism already past?
Two reporters of Gazeta Wyborcza investigated this story for several months.
In the age of cost-cutting and newspapers’ downsizing one could say it is not a cost-effective way to do journalism: two people keep digging one big story despite the fact that they can at a time cover hundreds of simpler and easier news stories, for example local ones.
Gazeta’s first deputy editor-in-chief Jaroslaw Kurski spoke about this issue in a recent interview with the Editors Weblog:
Jean Yves Chainon asks: Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?
Jaroslaw Kurski answers: Investigative journalism is a core of our editorial practice and as our world and lives become more complex, I see the need for this kind of public service rising.
We live in the world flooded with information, but it is served in bites, so many bites, that it is getting harder and harder to see the whole picture. We need wise journalists to solve this puzzle.
We live in the world of instant news, but it is often reaching only the surface of problems and challenges that we face. We need great journalits to show what was NOT on TV and the net. We need to understand what really happened.
We live in the world influenced more and more by professional public relations; it changes the way politics is done. We need clever journalists to see what’s behind the curtain, to ask the hard questions, to watch hands of those in power.
We live in the world of global economy and large corporations that affect people’s lifes and business. We need investigative journalists to provide us all with reliable information to make better decisions.
On March 10 we broke an exclusive news about a Catholic priest who reportedly sexually abused young boys and about three bishops who – although informed and alerted about the abuses – have been reluctant to investigate the case for 13 years! We publish Gazeta Wyborcza also to uncover stories like this.
Tagged: feature, Gazeta, investigative journalism, newspaper, taboo
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