Worldwide organization of practicing Catholics formed in response to the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The relevance of priestly celibacy today by Crescenzio Sepe, Titular Archbishop of Grado
Official website of the United States Conference of Bishops, has a special section on the abuse scandal.
LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER POPE JOHN PAUL II TO PRIESTS FOR HOLY THURSDAY 2002
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
Develop a response to the problems of clergy sexual abuse and the various institutional religions failures.
Boston Globe spotlight investigation: abuse in the catholic church
Catholic Panel Rebukes Bishops for Abuse
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer
WASHINGTON - A panel of prominent Roman Catholics rebuked U.S. bishops Friday for failing to stop widespread clerical sex abuse over the last half-century, calling the leaders’ performance “shameful to the church.”
The comments came as the National Review Board, a lay watchdog panel formed by the bishops, issued two highly anticipated studies documenting the molestation problem from 1950 to 2002.
One report is the first church-sanctioned tally of abuse cases: It found there have been 10,667 abuse claims over those 52 years. More than 80 percent of the alleged victims were male and over half said they were between ages 11 and 14 when they were assaulted.
About 4 percent of all American clerics who served during the years studied � 4,392 of the 109,694 priests and others under vows to the church � were accused of abuse.
The second report examines the causes of the molestation crisis and puts much of the blame on American bishops for not cracking down on errant priests.
“This is a failing not simply on the part of the priests who sexually abused minors but also on the part of those bishops and other church leaders who did not act effectively to preclude that abuse in the first instance or respond appropriately when it occurred,” the review board said in a summary of its findings.
“These leadership failings have been shameful to the church.”
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice conducted the tally of abuse claims for review board, receiving survey responses from 97 percent of the nation’s 195 dioceses, plus 142 religious communities.
It found that, of the 10,667 reports of assaults on minors, more than 10 percent were unsubstantiated and roughly 20 percent were not investigated because the priest accused was dead or inactive when the allegation was received. The Diocese of Yakima, Wash., said in a news release that approximately 6,700 claims were substantiated.
The John Jay report also calculated abuse-related costs such as litigation and counseling at $572 million, and noted that the figure does not cover settlements within the past year including $85 million in Boston.
The abuse tally also shows that the number of reported cases grew through the 1950s and ’60s and peaked in the 1970s, then began to drop off � slipping notably in the last decade. Victims’ advocates say that’s because there is a reporting lag; they say abuse victims often do not come forward for years or even decades.
The report on the causes of the crisis was based on interviews with clergy, victims, experts on sex offenders and others who have studied molestation.
The findings are sure to fuel debate among Catholics on two controversial issues: whether the church should try to screen out gay priests and whether celibacy for clergy should be optional.
The board said celibacy was not a cause of the scandal, but that the celibacy requirement may have attracted candidates for the priesthood who were seeking an escape from their sexual problems.
The board came to no direct conclusions about whether gays should be ordained. However, it noted that “any evaluation of the causes and context of the current crisis must be cognizant of the fact that more than 80 percent of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature.”
The board acknowledged that some bishops recognized the gravity of the problem early on, and spent years lobbying the Vatican (news - web sites) to change church law so they could move faster against abusers.
The study also said the bishops were sometimes ill-served by the therapists and lawyers they sought out for guidance. Yet the board still called the prelates to task for what it said were a “significant and disturbing” number of cases.
The bishops have apologized repeatedly for any wrongdoing and have enacted several reforms to protect children since the long-simmering abuse problem erupted more than two years ago in Boston. The discipline policy they adopted in June 2002 bars sex offenders from all public ministry.
And the bishops authorized the landmark studies to restore trust in their leadership. No other profession or religious group has exposed itself to such scrutiny on the abuse issue, even though molestation is an acknowledged problem among coaches, teachers and clergy of other faiths.
Estimates of the number of guilty clerics have varied dramatically over the years. Church officials have said anywhere between 1 percent and 3 percent of clergy abused minors, while projections by outside experts ranged from 4 percent to 5 percent.
Experts say there’s no way to know whether priests are more or less likely to abuse minors because studies of society at large are deeply flawed.
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10,667 Children Report Abuse by Priests - Study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 10,600 children said they were molested by priests since 1950 in an epidemic of child sexual abuse involving at least 4 percent of U.S. Roman Catholic priests, two studies reported on Friday.
The two studies, which were commissioned by U.S. Catholic bishops in 2002, said the abuse peaked with the ordination class of 1970, from which one in 10 priests was eventually accused of abuse.
The report revealed that 10,667 children were allegedly victimized by 4,392 priests from 1950 to 2002, but said the figures depend on self-reporting by American bishops and were probably an undercount.
The Archdiocese of Boston on Thursday released local figures from the reports, saying 7 percent of its priests were accused of abuse in the last 50 years.
A group of academics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York conducted one of the reports. It said 97 percent of the dioceses filled out its surveys.
The other report, on the causes and context of the crisis, was written by a team of prominent Catholic lawyers, judges, business people and bishop-appointed professionals on a national review board.
It used interviews with 85 bishops and cardinals, Vatican (news - web sites) officials, experts and a handful of victims.
The 145-page report looked at the culture in Catholic seminaries, where priests are trained, and chanceries that it said tolerated moral laxity and a gay subculture.
While the report made recommendations for reform, it did not say if church doctrine or rules needed to be changed.
“The problem facing the church was not caused by church doctrine, and the solution does not lie in questioning doctrine,” said the review board’s report.
Between 1950 and 2003, 162 priests were accused of molesting minors, the archdiocese of Boston said, citing the John Jay report. (Additional reporting by Sinead Carew)
