We must not give in to empty politics and pretend that we have created a crime-preventing measure just because we established a public list. The Justice Minister’s idea that the register itself will act as a preventive measure because a person who committed a crime will not want to be on it seems more than strange.
A person who dares to commit a sexual crime against a child already faces one of the harshest sanctions – imprisonment. This threat does not stop the crime from being committed. So why should we think that another entry in another list will be the boundary that the offender fears more than imprisonment?
Training – just the first step
How to spot emerging risks before a crime? How to create an environment where a child feels safe to speak up? How to learn to trust a child? These are just a few questions that must be answered.
It is encouraging that the Government talks about training, but it should not be limited to schools and Church communities. Everyone willing should be taught to recognize sexual violence against children, respond appropriately, and fulfill the duty to report, and it should be mandatory for those who directly deal with children due to their work or activities.
It is especially important to talk about what happens outside institutional walls. In many cases, in stories of sexual exploitation, the very community of believers can contribute to a culture of silence – doubting the victim’s words, blaming them, defending authority, or primarily caring about the institution’s reputation. This is exactly where the register solves nothing. Even training will not help if the attitude does not change.
If a child is afraid to speak, if adults do not believe them, if the community defends the suspected offender rather than the possible victim – everything proposed today will lead to a dead end. Therefore, it is necessary to finally answer a much more uncomfortable question: why could sexual exploitation of children in the Church continue at all? Ministry meetings, training, or a new register are not enough for that. An independent investigation is needed.
When the Church refuses – the state must act
It is necessary to establish an independent commission to investigate current and past cases of child sexual exploitation in the Church, institutional mechanisms, possible concealment of crimes, shifting responsibility to victims, and how whistleblowers were treated. Such a commission should examine not only specific crimes but also the system itself that allowed them to occur or be hidden.
If the Church itself is ready for such an independent investigation – great. But if it does not want to initiate it itself, the state should not give up. It must create its own commission and legally grant all the powers necessary for the investigation. Such a commission should have the right to access internal Church documents necessary for the investigation, demand them, and receive answers from responsible persons. If documents are hidden or refused to be provided, strict sanctions must be foreseen.
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This is not a fight against faith or the Church. It is the state’s duty to protect children. We cannot talk about institutional autonomy when it comes to possible crimes against children and their possible concealment. Freedom of religion cannot mean the right of an institution to decide what information about child exploitation can be available to the state and law enforcement and what must be concealed.
The Church still has the opportunity to take action itself. The call to do so can be expressed by signing a petition for the “Establishment of an Independent Commission to Investigate Sexual Crimes.” If we want real prevention, we must invest in the ability to recognize signs of crime, report them, protect the person who spoke up, and ensure that no authority is above the law. These are exactly the recommendations that an independent commission identifying gaps in Lithuania should offer.
Measures that work
There are many solutions on how this problem could be addressed. Unlike the register, whose entries found by a specific child’s peers or school friends can make that child’s life unbearable, there are already more effective measures.
First of all, there should be one clear, independent reporting system in Lithuania, where a child, their relatives, or any adult can turn without fear that the information will first go to the institution that might benefit from hiding it. After reporting a possible crime, the assessment and investigation should be taken over by state institutions, not a specific religious community. It must be ensured that the victim is protected during the investigation.
Second, it is necessary to strengthen not only the control of suspected offenders but also the responsibility of institutions for what they do after receiving information about a possible crime. International practice shows that a big problem is not only the offender but also the organizational culture that allows the suspected person to be transferred elsewhere, silences the victim, or avoids publicity. This requires a very simple principle – when a crime is suspected or established, a pre-trial investigation must also be conducted to determine whether the institution covered up this activity.
It is also necessary to check how specific institutions and communities comply with child protection standards and apply sanctions. If this is not done, why should the institution be allowed to operate with children at all? It is important to understand that real prevention starts not from the question of who has already committed a crime, but from what is being done today to prevent the crime from happening at all.
