Islands, Enclaves, and the Offshoring of Clerical Sexual Abuse

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Abstract Between 1952 and 1968, a Roman Catholic religious order known as the Servants of the Paraclete sought, bought, and finally sold several small islands in the Caribbean for priests said to be unable to stop “sin[ning] repeatedly with little children.” This article, in response, details the Servants of the Paraclete’s mid-twentieth-century efforts at offshoring sexually abusive priests in and then beyond the Caribbean. It is an historical account that pushes scholars of clerical sexual abuse to engage the interstitial spaces that Church leaders have long sought for its perpetrators while at the same time flagging for students of sovereignty and the nation-state that mid-century practices of offshoring shaped not only the history of capitalism but also the history of the Roman Catholic Church.