Agreed, Dave, but unfortunately this is a fertile area for potentially vexatious accusations to be made, for all kinds of reasons. I can see both sides of this argument and I get what Georgiansilver is saying. But sexual abuse, especially but by no means exclusively of children, creates wounds that time can't heal. That's why I agreed with that judge I mentioned who railed against the lawyer who tried to use "historical" as a mitigation. You could hardly use that in the case of an "historical" child murder, could you? In the Westcountry we have the cases of the two teenagers, Jeanette Tate (1983) and Kate Bushell (1997) which have never been solved. You wouldn't call the pursuit of their killers a "witch-hunt," would you?

I simply don't buy "historical" and I especially don't buy it in the case of child abuse by clerics. They may crave the forgiveness of their God, thereby hoping for their place in heaven, but their victims are ruined for life and their perpetrators don't deserve a free pass.