Abuse victims question if Pope Francis did enough to stop predators

As 133 cardinals meet in Rome to decide the next pope, questions about the legacy of the last one will loom large over their discussions.

For the Catholic Church, no aspect of Pope Francis' record is more sensitive or contentious than his handling of the sexual abuse of children by of the clergy.

While he's widely considered to have gone further than his predecessors in acknowledging victims and reforming the Church's own internal procedures, many survivors do not think he went far enough.

Alexa Maherson's abuse by a Catholic priest began around the age of three and continued for six years.

"When I was nine-and-a-half, my father caught him trying to rape me on the living room couch," she told me when we met on the Boston waterfront.

"For me, it was pretty much an everyday occurrence."

On discovering the abuse, her father called the police.

A court hearing for a criminal complaint against the priest, Peter Kanchong, accused of assault and battery of a minor, was set for 24 August 1984.

But unbeknownst to the family, something extraordinary was taking place behind the scenes.

The Church – an institution that wielded enormous power in a deeply Catholic city – believed that the court was on its side.

"The court is attempting to handle the matter in such a way as to help Father Peter and to avoid scandal to the Church," the then-Archbishop of Boston, Bernard Law, wrote in a letter that would remain hidden for years.

Reflecting on the events of more than four decades ago, Ms Maherson recognises that her abuse took place long before Francis became pope.

But over that same period, through a series of global scandals which are still unfolding, the issue of the systemic sexual exploitation of children has become the modern Church's biggest challenge.

It is a challenge she believes Pope Francis failed to rise to, as she made clear when I asked her how she had reacted to the news of his death.

"I actually don't feel like I had much of a reaction," she replied.

"And I don't want to take away from the good that he did do, but there's just so much more that the Church and the Vatican and the people in charge can do."

The 1984 letter from Archbishop Bernard Law was addressed to a bishop in Thailand.

Mentioning the accusation of "child molestation" it was written two months after the Boston court hearing, which had indeed concluded without scandal for the Church.

Peter Kanchong - who was originally from Thailand - had been spared from formal criminal charges and given a year's probation on the condition that he stayed away from the Maherson family and underwent a course of psychological therapy.

The Archbishop's letter, however, noted that even the Church's own psychological evaluation had determined that the accused priest was "not motivated and unresponsive to therapy" and should therefore be "forced to face the consequences of his actions" under both civil and Church law.

But instead of acting on that advice, he implored the Thai bishop to immediately recall Peter Kanchong to his diocese in Thailand, mentioning for a second time the risk of "grave scandal" if he were to remain in the US.

Although press reports from the time suggest the Church authorities in Thailand did agree to take him back, Peter Kanchong ignored the recall, finding work in the Boston area at a facility for adults with learning disabilities.

In 2002, more than 18 years after Ms Maherson's father first called the police, the archbishop's letter was made public.

In a landmark ruling, it was one of thousands of pages of documents that a Boston court ordered the Catholic Church to release.

A local newspaper, The Boston Globe, had, for the first time, begun to seriously challenge the institution's power in the city, by placing the stories of victims on its front pages.

Soon, hundreds had come forward and their lawyers were fighting in court to prise open decades of internal records relating to the sexual abuse of children.

The Church had tried to argue that the First Amendment protection for freedom of religion entitled it to keep those files secret.

The order to unseal them led to a watershed moment.

ed at the time, Peter Kanchong denied the allegations.

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