A person who identified himself as a victim of abuse by clergy said that the media failed to cover his case despite having 30 people with affidavits to attest to the abuse. He said a picture of him and his abuser was included in CNN's documentary promotions, yet his story was dropped from the documentary to accommodate the Bernardin angle. He said the archdiocese's policies and procedures are helpful on paper, but ultimately ineffectual.
Another person observed that even the church concedes that 95 percent of the allegations against priests are true, yet others, such as Clements, view the atmosphere as akin to a witch hunt. Clements responded that the situation has become so polarized that he knows of people who are extorting money from priests because they know priests are so fearful of what a mere accusation can do. He also said he knows of people who are avoiding the priesthood because they fear their reputations will be attacked.
Miller said she thinks the cover-up in the church is more responsible for the loss of good clergy. She offered this epilogue to her son's story. After the priest in her son's case was reassigned a few times by the church, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, more than 10 years after the initial allegations were brought to the church's attention.
Hicks said that in the Lutheran Church, clergy are temporarily removed if during the investigation, the accusations are sufficiently credible. He said the key is to make sure the minister is not in a position to abuse someone again.
Ellen Hume, Annenberg Senior Fellow and periodic guest on CNN's "Reliable Sources," said from the audience that part of the problem in the Bernardin case rests with CNN itself. Her recollection of the coverage on CNN's "Headline News" was of a sobbing Cook every half hour, with a voice-over saying the cardinal denied the charges. Anderson disputed the observation, saying not once did they run Cook's accusations without also running a response of equal or greater length from Bernardin.
Smolla pointed to the discontinuity between the perception of a feeding frenzy in the Bernardin case and the steadfast defense of the coverage by the media at the conference, as if the sum of media coverage is greater and more damaging than its parts.
A member of the audience focused on the importance of language in the discussion, referring to Jeffrey Anderson's choice of the word "victim" instead of potential client or accuser. She suggested that before a determination of guilt, the more appropriate term should be accuser and accused, not perpetrator or another term implying guilt. Anderson responded that in his experience representing plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases, almost always the abuse actually happened even if the legal system cannot redress the alleged wrong.
Another member of the audience asked whether the news media coverage would have been more restrained if CNN had not aired its documentary. McCarron believed the coverage would have been sensational with or without CNN. He noted, though, that the conference drove home for him the reality that plaintiffs' attorneys use press coverage as a tool in their litigation kit, and that it is incumbent upon journalists, who hate to be anyone's tool, to avoid being used in that fashion.
A member of the audience, who identified himself as being with the United Church of Christ, suggested that the real ethical dynamic in abuse cases is whistle blowing, that is, the need to expose the wrongdoing. He noted that even in the Cook case, with the Bernardin case dismissed and the allegations against Harsham settled, the public, including congregations and church members, still does not know what happened.
Lewis concluded that false accusations, such as those against Cardinal Bernardin, do not help the cause of those victimized by clergy. He admitted that no easy solutions exist other than judgment and responsibility on the part of both lawyers and journalists, and offered that any journalist or lawyer who did not become intensely skeptical of the allegations made in the Bernardin case should be in some other profession.
Farrell suggested that the solution was not that easy because repressed memory cannot be dismissed so completely.
A final comment from the audience suggested that the Bernardin case and stories like it do not occur in a media vacuum: radio talk shows and movies of the week on aberrant social behavior are so common that we have come to equate repressed memory with ordinary memory, and as a result, the legitimate traditional press is almost doomed from the outset.