PBS TV show Frontline covers Alaska clergy sex abuse
Is there a corner of the world where Catholic Clergy have not abused children?
The Silence,” a 30-minute program documenting one of Bishop Donald Kettler’s journeys of atonement across the Fairbanks Catholic Diocese will be the lead story on Frontline, PBS’s public affairs program, at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The documentary focuses on Kettler’s trip in early December to the village of St. Michael on Alaska’s western coast, where a generation of Yup’ik children were molested by Catholic clergy and workers.
The Bishop’s trips to apologize to abuse victims in the many churches where abuse took place were mandated by the diocese’s 2010 bankruptcy settlement.
The documentary is heart-wrenching and difficult to watch as the victims — now adults — detail how they suffered as children.