Please sign the Downing Street petition!

If you feel strongly about the issue of child abuse, send a message to the UK's new Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street

Following on from my last post about the abuse case involving former Salesians' pupil Graham Wilmer http://millstonesblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/conspiracy-of-faith-graham-wilmers.html I noticed that Graham is a co-founder of something called The Lantern Project.

This is a registered charity, based in Wallasey, Merseyside. It was founded originally as Victims No Longer in October 2000. In April 2003, with the help of fellow survivor David Williams, the organisation was registered by the Charity Commission for England and Wales, and changed its name to The Lantern Project on 5 December 2003.

The Lantern Project currently has five trustees and over 800 registered members. The Project is also a member of the Survivors Trust, which lobbies government on child protection issues. For more information see http://www.lanternproject.org.uk/aboutus

The Lantern Project has launched a Downing Street petition asking the Prime Minister "to establish a commission for truth and reconciliation in the UK to enable victims of sexual abuse to disclose what happened to them and have their experiences acknowledged, and the subsequent harm they suffered recognised and resolved."

During the 2010 General Election campaign the e-petitions service was suspended, and apparently the new Liberal Democrat-Conservative administration is currently assessing how best to proceed with it.

Meanwhile it seems that the deadline to sign up to this important petition is
23 September 2010. So far there are only 25 signatures.

Many Catholics and non-Catholics still have doubts about how their Church has handled the historic problem of clerical child abuse.

They are looking for significant gestures and actions which prove that the Catholic Church is taking the issue seriously.

One action would be for Archbishop Nichols, its senior churchman in England and Wales, to ask clergy in every diocese to sign the petition.

To see the Downing Street petition, click on http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/sexabusevictims/