The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. February 20, 2019 Women Survivors of Church Sexual Abuse Speak Out ------------------------------------------------ On Tuesday, a group of women, including survivors of sexual abuse by church leaders, held a press conference in Rome ahead of the Vatican's summit. This is survivor and advocate Barbara Dorris. Barbara Dorris: "Church officials have framed this as a homosexual issue, for a couple of reasons. It takes away from the real focus on the problem, which is criminal sexual assault, and it acts as a smokescreen: You have people now discussing homosexuality rather than the crimes themselves. And homosexual issues automatically remove the women from the discussion, and, magically, half the victims have been made to disappear." .