In many, many cases the parents were INTIMIDATED into not pursuing charges.
True, but I just cannot fathom being bullied into not having justice done on behalf of one of my children. Maybe it's just my own attitudes toward the priesthood. I wasn't raised to think in terms of the priest being always right. He was always just a man, and his decisions could be right or wrong. Maybe that's a regional difference. I grew up in the South, and there were very few Catholics, so we tended to not take our faith for granted. I was also used to people taking any opportunity to denigrate Catholics, even if the accusation was not true, so that is probably what's grating on me about all this. It's bad enough when someone outside the Church does it. It's even worse when it comes from within.