WASHINGTON (ABP) — About 4 percent of the Catholic priests who served in the United States during the past half century were accused of sexual abuse, according to a first-ever report issued by a Catholic study commission Feb. 27.
The panel found there were 10,667 claims of abuse against 4,392 of the 109,694 priests who served between 1950 and 2002. More than 80 percent of the alleged abuse cases were of a homosexual nature. Over half of the alleged victims said they were between the ages of 11 and 14 when they were assaulted.
The National Review Board, a panel of prominent Roman Catholics appointed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, blamed those bishops for failing to stop the widespread abuse. Meanwhile, the bishops' president pledged the church's mistakes will never be repeated. The report is the first accounting sanctioned by the Catholic Church. But advocates for the sex-abuse victims complained the numbers are too low, saying many victims delay or refuse to report abuse and some bishops have not revealed all cases.
A second report from the review panel examined the causes of the molestation crisis. ''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,'' the review board said. ''These leadership failings have been shameful to the church.''
The abuse tally, conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was based on information from 97 percent of the nation's 195 dioceses and 142 religious communities. It showed the number of reported abuse cases grew through the 1950s and 1960s and peaked in the 1970s. The abuse reports dropped off notably in the last decade, but victims' advocates say that's because victims often do not come forward for years or decades.
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