Evasion
This is a study of clerical sexual abuse in Latin America. While the topic is tragically expansive, with new scandals emerging throughout the region, this book project focuses on U.S. priests who moved (or were moved) to Latin America to evade suspicion and, at times, prosecution. The project centers on multiple instances of priests moving from the United States to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Belize. Given that clerical sexual abuse is a criminal offense, today’s growing literature understandably maintains a nationalist framework hitched to domestic matters of church and state. In contrast, this research opens a window onto transnational strategies of evasion by connecting the United States to Central America and the Vatican. It is a book that builds on a sustained research collective founded and directed by Professor O’Neill: the Evasion Lab. Committed to thinking the underside of surveillance, the Evasion Lab focused on the themes of data, law, and finance—to consider how institutions and individuals (for better, for worse) make themselves illegible and thus ungovernable.
