Number of victims may never be known

The Catholic Church’s child safety watchdog has said it may never know the number of victims of clerical sex abuse where priests could have been taken out of circulation earlier to prevent further harm.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church yesterday published eight audit reports which highlighted the scale of clerical child sex abuse in recent decades and, in many cases, the lack of action to halt the activities of priests engaged in it.

In particular, the safeguarding audit of the St Patrick’s Missionary Society, also known as the Kiltegan Fathers, showed how some priests abused children in Africa dating back to the mid-1960s.