Catholic sex abuse cases

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The Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and scandals in the Catholic Church related to sex crimes committed by Catholic priests and members of religious orders, while under diocesan control or in orders that care for the sick or teach children, that began receiving widespread public attention in the last two decades of the 20th century. The issue of pedophilia in the priesthood has received significant media attention in Canada, Ireland and the United States, Mexico, Belgium, France, and Germany, while cases have been reported throughout the world.

In addition to cases of actual abuse, much of the scandal has focused around members of the Catholic hierarchy who did not report abuse allegations to the civil authorities and, in many cases, reassigned the offenders to other locations where they continued to have contact with minors and had opportunities to continue in their sexual abuse. In defending their actions, some bishops and psychiatrists contended that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling. Members of the church hierarchy have argued that media coverage has been excessive given that abuse occurs in other institutions.

Of all the world's religions, however, the Catholic Church has been hardest hit by scandals involving adults having sex with children. In the US, churches have paid more than $2bn (£1.25bn) in compensation to victims. In Ireland, reports into clerical sexual abuse have rocked both the Catholic hierarchy and the state. A nine-year government study, the Ryan Report, published in May 2009, revealed that beatings and humiliation by nuns and priests were common at institutions that held up to 30,000 children. The investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades "terrorised thousands of boys and girls, while government inspectors failed to stop the abuse.

In response to the widening scandal, Pope John Paul II emphasized the spiritual nature of the offenses as well. He declared in 2001 that "a sin against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue by a cleric with a minor under 18 years of age is to be considered a grave sin, or delictum gravius." With the approval of the Vatican, the hierarchy of the church in the United States claimed to institute reforms to prevent future abuse including requiring background checks for Church employees and volunteers, while opposing legislation making it easier for abuse victims to sue the Catholic Church.

Scope and nature

Global extent

See also: Roman Catholic sex abuse cases by country

Allegations of sexual abuse by clergy have been made in many countries (see Roman Catholic sex abuse cases by country). After the United States, the country with the next highest number of cases is Ireland. A significant number of cases have also been reported in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

In 2001, major lawsuits emerged in the United States and Ireland, alleging that some priests had sexually abused minors and that their superiors had conspired to conceal and otherwise abet their criminal misconduct. In 2004, the John Jay report tabulated a total of 4,392 priests and deacons in the U.S. against whom allegations of sexual abuse have been made.

Although the scandals in the U.S. and Ireland unfolded over approximately the same time period, there are some significant differences between them. In the United States, most of the abusers were parish priests under diocesan control. While there were also a significant number of abuse cases involving parish priests in Ireland, another major scandal involved criminal abuse committed by members of religious orders working in Catholic-run institutions such as orphanages and reform schools. In the United States, the abuse was primarily sexual in nature and involved mostly boys between the ages of 11 and 17; in Ireland, the allegations involved both physical and sexual abuse, and children of both sexes were involved, although a large majority were male.

In a statement read out by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi in September 2009, the Holy See stated "We know now that in the last 50 years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases", adding that this figure was comparable with that of other groups and denominations.  Additionally, according to Newsweek magazine, the figure in the Catholic Church is similar to that in the rest of the adult population.  In contrast according to the Economist given that 45 of the 850 priests in Malta have been accused of sexual abuse the problem is "alarmingly widespread".

In the United States

Main article: John Jay Report

See also: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States

The 2004 John Jay Report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The surveys filtered provided information from diocesan files on each priest accused of sexual abuse and on each of the priest's victims to the research team, in a format which did not disclose the names of the accused priests or the dioceses where they worked. The dioceses were encouraged to issue reports of their own based on the surveys that they had completed.

The team reported that 10,667 people in the US had made allegations of child sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002 against 4,392 priests (about 4% of all 109,694 priests who served during the time period covered by the study). One-third of the accusations were made in the years 2002 and 2003, and another third between 1993 and 2001. "Thus, prior to 1993, only one-third of cases were known to church officials," says the report.

Of the 11,000-odd allegations, 6,700 were investigated and substantiated against 1,872 priests, and another 1,000 were unsubstantiated against 824 priests. The remaining 3,300 allegations were not investigated because the priests involved had died by the time the allegations were made.  The allegations were thought to be credible for 1,671 priests and not credible for 345 priests.  Police were contacted regarding 1,021 priests. Nearly all these reports led to investigations, and 384 instances have led to criminal charges. Of those priests for whom information about dispositions is available, 252 were convicted and at least 100 of those served time in prison. Thus, 6% of all priests against whom allegations were made had been convicted and about 2% sentenced to prison at the date of the report.

Of the 4,392 accused priests included in the report, 56% were the subject of a single allegation. Just under 3% (or 149 priests) were the subject of ten or more allegations. These priests accounted for 2,960 of the total number of allegations. Around 81% of the victims were male; 51% between the ages of 11 and 14, and 27% between the ages to 15 to 17 years. (For more details, see the "Statistics on offenders and victims" section below.)

Based on a database of 3,000 priests accused of sexual abuse that it had compiled, the group BishopAccountability.org said in 2009 that one-third of the abusive priests in the US had links to Ireland (the article on this database refers to some as "either born in Ireland or are of Irish descent who came to the US" but did not define the "links to Ireland").

The John Jay report identified the following factors as contributing to the sexual abuse problem:

   1. Failure by the hierarchy to grasp the seriousness of the problem

   2. Overemphasis on the need to avoid a scandal

   3. Use of unqualified treatment centers

   4. Misguided willingness to forgive

   5. Insufficient accountability

The John Jay Report contains actual statistics against which some less detailed opinions can be tested. For example the report found that 4.0% of all priests active between 1950 and 2002 had allegations of abuse and additionally states "It is impossible to determine from our surveys what percent of all actual cases of abuse that occurred between 1950 and 2002 have been reported to the Church and are therefore in our dataset. Allegations of child sexual abuse are made gradually over an extended time period and it is likely that further allegations will be made with respect to recent time periods covered in our surveys" (the possibility of some cases never being reported is not discussed); the figure of 4% is sometimes quoted as a total figure. The Report found that between 80-90% of the victims were pubescent males, and that allegations of actual pedophilia only occurred in approximately 10% of the cases.

Statistics on offenders and victims

United States

The 2004 John Jay Report was based on a study of 10,667 allegations against 4,392 priests accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002. The number 4,392 represents four percent of the 109,694 priests in active ministry during that time. Approximately:

    * 56 percent had one reported allegation against them; 27 percent had two or three allegations against them; nearly 14 percent had four to nine allegations against them; 3 percent (149 priests) had 10 or more allegations against them. These 149 priests were responsible for almost 3,000 victims, or 27 percent of the allegations.

    * The allegations were substantiated for 1,872 priests and unsubstantiated for 824 priests. They were thought to be credible for 1,671 priests and not credible for 345 priests. 298 priests and deacons who had been completely exonerated are not included in the study.

    * 50 percent were 35 years of age or younger at the time of the first instance of alleged abuse.

    * Almost 70 percent were ordained before 1970.

    * Fewer than 7 percent were reported to have themselves been victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children. Although 19 percent had alcohol or substance abuse problems, only 9 percent were reported to have been using drugs or alcohol during the instances of abuse.

There were approximately 10,667 reported minor victims of clergy sexual abuse during this period:

    * Around 81 percent of these victims were male.

    * 22.6% were age 10 or younger, 51% were between the ages of 11 and 14, and 27% were between the ages to 15 to 17 years.

    * A substantial number (almost 2000) of very young children were victimized by priests during this time period.

    * 9,281 victim surveys had information about an investigation. In 6,696 (72%) cases, an investigation of the allegation was carried out. Of these, 4,570 (80%) were substantiated; 1,028 (18%) were unsubstantiated; 83 (1.5%) were found to be false. In 56 cases, priests were reported to deny the allegations.

    * More than 10 percent of these allegations were characterized as not substantiated. (This does not mean that the allegation was false; it means only that the diocese or order could not determine whether the alleged abuse actually took place.)

    * For approximately 20 percent of the allegations, the priest was deceased or inactive at the time of the receipt of the allegation and typically no investigation was conducted in these circumstances.

    * In 38.4% of allegations, the abuse is alleged to have occurred within a single year, in 21.8% the alleged abuse lasted more than a year but less than 2 years, in 28% between 2 and 4 years, in 10.2% between 5 and 9 years and, in under 1%, 10 or more years.

Many of the reported acts of sexual abuse involved fondling or unspecified abuse. There was also a large number of allegations of more grave abuse, including acts of oral sex and intercourse. Detailed information on the nature of the abuse was not reported for 26.6% of the reported allegations. 27.3% of the allegations involved the cleric performing oral sex on the victim. 25.1% of the allegations involved penile penetration or attempted penetration.

Although there were reported acts of sexual abuse of minors in every year, the incidence of reported abuse increased by several orders of magnitude in the 1960s and 1970s. There was, for example, a more than sixfold increase in the number of reported acts of abuse of males aged 11 to 17 between the 1950s and the 1970s. After peaking in the 1970s, the number of incidents decreased through the 1980s and 1990s even more sharply than the incidence rate had increased in the 1960s and 1970s.

International public awareness

Although nation-wide enquiries have only been conducted in the United States and Ireland, cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors have been reported and prosecuted in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other countries.

In 1994 allegations of sexual abuse on 47 young seminarians surfaced in Argentina.

In 1995 Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër resigned from his post as Archbishop of Vienna, Austria over allegations of sexual abuse, although he remained a Cardinal.

In Australia more than 12 priests of the dioceses of Canberra and Goulburn, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Townsville, Ballarat, Bunbury, Wagga Wagga and Marist Fathers of Tasmania were convicted for sexual abuse.[citation needed]

On April 7, 2010, it was revealed that a former bishop of the Norwegian Catholic Church, Georg Müller, had confessed to the Norwegian Police in early January 2010 that he had sexually abused an underaged altar boy 20 years earlier. The Norwegian Catholic Church was made aware of the incident but did not alert the authorities. Müller was made to step down as a bishop in July 2009. As a reaction to this news, the Bishop of Oslo, Bernt Eidsvig, admitted to the Norwegian Press that he was aware of a total of four cases of pedophilia in the Norwegian Catholic Church.

United States

Main article: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States

Although bishops had been sending sexually abusive priests to facilities such as those operated by the Servants of the Paraclete since the 1950s, there was scant public discussion of the problem until the mid-1960s. Even then, most of the discussion was held amongst the Catholic hierarchy with little or no coverage in the media. The first public discussion of sexual abuse of minors by priests took place at a meeting sponsored by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal held on the campus of Notre Dame University in 1967, to which all U.S. Catholic bishops were invited. Various local and regional discussions of the problem were held by Catholic bishops in later years.

However, it was not until the 1980s that discussion of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clerics began to be covered as a phenomenon in the news media of the United States. According to the Catholic News Service public awareness of the sexual abuse of children in the United States and Canada emerged in the late 1970s and the 1980s as an outgrowth of the growing awareness of physical abuse of children.

In 1981 Father Donald Roemer of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles pled guilty to felonious sexual abuse of a minor. The case received widespread media coverage. In September 1983, the National Catholic Reporter published an article on the topic. The subject gained wider national notoriety in October 1985 when Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe pled guilty to 11 counts of molestation of boys. After the coverage of Gilbert Gauthe subsided, the issue faded to the fringes of public attention until the mid-1990s, when the issue was again brought to national attention after a number of books on the topic were published.

In early 2002 the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priests drew the attention, first of the United States and ultimately the world, to the problem. Other victims began to come forward with their own allegations of abuse resulting in more lawsuits and criminal cases. Since then, the problem of clerical abuse of minors has received significantly more attention from the Church hierarchy, law enforcement agencies, government and the news media.

Ireland

Main article: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland

Starting in the 1990s a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries covered allegations that priests had abused hundreds of minors over previous decades. In many cases the abusing priests had been moved by senior clergy to other parishes. By 2010 a number of in-depth judicial reports had been published, but with relatively few prosecutions. The abuse was occasionally made known to staff at the Department of Education, the police and other government bodies, who have said that prosecuting clergy was extremely difficult given the "Catholic ethos" of the Irish Republic.

In 1994 Micheal Ledwith resigned as President of St Patrick's College, Maynooth when allegations of sexual abuse were made public. In June 2005 Denis McCullough reported that a number of bishops had rejected concerns about Ledwith's inappropriate behavior towards seminarians "so completely and so abruptly without any adequate investigation" although his report conceded that "to investigate in any very full or substantial manner, a generic complaint regarding a person’s apparent propensities would have been difficult”.

One of the most notorious cases of sex abuse in Ireland involved Brendan Smyth, who, between 1945 and 1989, sexually abused and indecently assaulted twenty children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States. Controversy over the handling of his extradition to Northern Ireland led to the 1994 collapse of the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government.

Canada

Main article: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Canada

Although the sheer number of sexual abuse cases in the United States has focused public attention on that country, there had been a smaller-scale scandal in Canada more than a decade before the US scandal. In the late 1980s allegations were made of physical and sexual abuse committed by members of the Christian Brothers, who operated the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's, Newfoundland. The government, police and church colluded in an unsuccessful attempt to cover up the allegations, but in December 1989 they were publicized in the St. John's Sunday Express. Eventually more than 300 former pupils came forward with allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the orphanage.  The religious order that ran the orphanage filed for bankruptcy in the face of numerous lawsuits. Since the Mount Cashel scandal a number of priests across Canada have been accused of sexual abuse.

Belgium

In June 2010, Belgian police raided the Belgian Catholic Church headquarters in Brussels, seizing a computer and records of a Church commission investigating allegations of child abuse. The authorities are investigating accusations that some Belgian clerics sexually abused children. Hundreds of such claims had been raised since April 2010, when the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, admitted to molesting a boy and resigned.  The Vatican was reported as being 'indignant' over the raids, claiming they had led to the "violation of confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out".  In July 2010 Belgian police stated that they were investigating complaints of deaths threats against witnesses and magistrates. In 1998 it was reported that a catechism textbook called Roeach 3 had been made by Belgian clergy which allegedly promoted pedophilia as acceptable within the church.