Institutional actors legitimize harm through utilitarian weighing of reputation against victim suffering

Evidence

The bishops’ actions indicated that their justification was based on utilitarian grounds: The harm to the moral authority of the church from disclosing the sexual abuse outweighed the harm inflicted on children. In the cover-up, which went on for years in the United States and Europe, some of the offending priests were relocated to other parishes. Many were assigned to mainly nonparish duties and referred for spiritual counseling. Families of victims who filed charges received sizable settlements. The lawyers representing the families referred to the payments as “hush money.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 492

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘sacrifice’ article — institutions treat victims as expendable when authority’s preservation is at stake, mirroring sacrificial logic.
• XREF: Concrete mechanism for how authorities rationalize protecting institutions over the harmed — parallels vault claims about authoritarian deference and institutional self-preservation. — connects to: Perceived reparations importance depends on judged harm severity and violated moral value. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 590
• QUESTION: Is the utilitarian frame genuinely post-hoc rationalization, or does institutional culture genuinely believe its own reputation outweighs child safety? Bandura implies moral disengagement but the passage doesn’t yet disambiguate.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 492