If you care about clergy sex abuse victims, you should read this. If you think that the Catholic Church is doing everything right in the scandal, you must read this. And then you must read it again.

Thousands of pages of child sex abuse and cover-up documents are now public in the Wilmington Delaware Diocese bankruptcy.  They outline the long-term and shockingly recent tragic, gut-wrenching, enraging, cavalier, disgusting, and criminal actions of priests, brothers, bishops, employees and church officials. And they show how kids were thrown under the bus over and over and over again.

From the Delaware News Journal:

One 2009 letter mentions a report that abuser priest Joseph A. McGovern, removed from ministry about two decades ago, had expressed his desire to move overseas to a place more amenable to “man/boy pedophiliac relationships.” A file on the investigation into allegations against another abuser priest includes photographs the priest took of a young boy emerging from a shower, wrapped in a towel. Scrawled across them are the priest’s handwritten notes, most with sexual connotations.

Start here for an overview of the documents and what they entail.  Full copies are online here.

Fortunately, this story has a hero. His name is Matt Conaty. If it were not for him and his family, victims in Wilmington would still be isolated, Catholics would be in the dark, and dangerous men would be roaming free to abuse more kids.

Think I’m overstating? You won’t after you read the documents.