More than 1,000 New Clergy Sex Abuse Claims Filed Last Year
"The crisis of sexual abuse of minors within the Catholic Church is not over. What is over is the denial that this problem exists, and what is over is the reluctance of the church to deal openly with the public about the nature and extent of the pr
Three full years have passed since the massive tidal wave of clergy sex-scandals swept across the nation, but with the release of a new report that revealed 1,092 new claims of abuse in the last year alone, it seems the Roman Catholic Church has a long way to swim before reaching secure ground.
On Friday, February 18, 2005, the U.S. church’s Office of Child and Youth Protection released a new audit of the pedophile scandal, at a press conference in Washington D.C. The new audit, the second report on the church’s response to the scandal since it erupted in 2002, found that 1,092 new claims of priest abuse was received last year and that the Catholic church paid more than $157 million to deal with them.
"The crisis of sexual abuse of minors within the Catholic Church is not over," Kathleen McChesney, head of the Office of Child and Youth Protection, said.
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"What is over is the denial that this problem exists, and what is over is the reluctance of the church to deal openly with the public about the nature and extent of the problem."
According to the Associated Press, the audit tallied the number of new complains, the amount spent on them and the percentage of American diocese that are complying with a 2002 charter aimed at ending priest sexual abuse.
At final count, the audit found that most of the 1092 allegations involved incidents between 1965 and 1974. The charges involved 756 priests and deacons, of which half have been previously accused of abuse. Additionally, the report found that most of the alleged incidents occurred decades ago: 72 percent of the accused were either dead, defrocked or removed from public ministry before the allegations were received.
The report also found that the vast majority of victims were male and between the age of 10 to 14 when the abuse began. Twenty0two allegations were made last year by children under the age of 18; all of these cases were reported to law enforcement.
In assessing the church’s response to such allegations, the audit of 194 diocese found that 74 percent were already in compliance with the church charger and that most of the remaining 26 percent complied by the end of 2004. According to William Gavin of the Gavin Group, which conducted the audit, the most common deficiencies were in parts of the charger that called for training to create safe environments and for background evaluations of parish personnel.
Meanwhile, David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, criticized the report for painting an incomplete picture of the way the church is handling the scandal.
"We owe it to innocent children and vulnerable adults to insist on hard evidence and solid data before determining progress is being made," Clohessy said.
The new audit follows an unprecedented statistical review last year that found 4,392 priests – or 5 percent of all Roman Catholic priests – had been accused of molesting minors between 1950 and 2002.
The first audit, also released a year ago, found that 90 percent of the 195 U.S> diocese were compliant with the child protection policy and charter. A third national audit will be held in the coming year.
To read the full text of the audit, visit: http://www.usccb.org/
