Brain
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And according to law anyone who helps cover up a crime is an accomplice or partner in crime?
Like Watergate the cover-up is worse than the original crime.
When a scandal breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more reprehensible than the original deeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover-up
The decision to cover up is a greater crime
It is certainly not the current practice of the Roman Catholic Church, although the rule in modern democracies is very clear: the law applies equally to everyone, even priests.
It's more than two decades since evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy began to surface in the United States, Canada and Ireland, and still the revelations continue.
A "tsunami" of allegations of child abuse in Catholic schools and orphanages is spreading from Ireland across the rest of Europe, and at the same time the extent of the cover-up is becoming clearer.
Even the Pope was involved.
http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/999596
Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests'
The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.
In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.
The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23369148-pope-led-cover-up-of-child-abuse-by-priests.do
Christopher Hitchens: The Great Catholic Cover-up
There are two separate but related matters here: First, the individual responsibility of the Pope in one instance of this moral nightmare and, second, his more general and institutional responsibility for the wider lawbreaking and for the shame and disgrace that goes with it. The first story is easily told, and it is not denied by anybody. In 1979, an 11-year-old German boy identified as Wilfried F. was taken on a vacation trip to the mountains by a priest. After that, he was administered alcohol, locked in his bedroom, stripped naked and forced to suck the penis of his confessor. (Why do we limit ourselves to calling this sort of thing “abuse”?) The offending cleric was transferred from Essen to Munich for “therapy” by a decision of then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, and assurances were given that he would no longer have children in his care. But it took no time for Ratzinger’s deputy, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, to return him to “pastoral” work, where he soon enough resumed his career of sexual assault.
It is, of course, claimed, and it will no doubt later be partially un-claimed, that Ratzinger himself knew nothing of this second outrage. I quote, here, from the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a former employee of the Vatican Embassy in Washington and an early critic of the Catholic Church’s sloth in responding to child-rape allegations. “Nonsense,” he says. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the Pope.”
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/holy-post/archive/2010/03/17/christopher-hitchens-the-great-catholic-cover-up.aspx
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RE: Vatican Defence: The Priests Aren't Our Employees - 
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