The Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis blankets the globe in darkness. We are at a tipping point — or at least we ought to be.

The unmasking and resignation of the former archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, placed alongside the recent release of an exhaustive grand jury report in Pennsylvania that describes in withering detail more than 1,000 grotesque abuses , has reinforced the growing public sentiment in favor of eliminating the statutes of limitations for child sex abuse. Under current law, a vast majority of victims will receive no justice because of an arbitrary procedural deadline.

To pierce the darkness of clerical knowledge of child sex abuse and to obtain justice for the victims, we need to change the statutes of limitation for these crimes, but that is not enough. To begin to see the light, we must also make clergy members mandated reporters of suspected abuse in every state the way teachers and doctors already are — and we need to begin to think about eliminating the confessional privilege.

Only one-third of abuse victims report what happened to them while they are still children. This is because of the power chasm between them and their abusers, threats from perpetrators and sometimes the children’s inability to comprehend fully what has been done to them. The insidious effects of trauma from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and other medical problems also hinder reporting. For all these reasons, the average age for victims to come forward is 52.