US bishops ‘shamed the church’ by failing to stop sex abuse

AMERICAN bishops were blamed yesterday for failing to stop widespread clerical sex abuse which resulted in almost 11,000 abuse claims against Catholic clergy over the past 50 years.

The censure came as the National Review Board, a lay watchdog panel formed by the bishops, issued two 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% of the alleged victims were male and over half said they were between ages 11 and 14 when they were assaulted.

About one in 25 of all American clerics who served during the years studied 4,392 out of 109,694 priests and others under vows were accused of abuse.

Approximately 6,700 claims were substantiated. About 3,300 were not investigated because the accused clergymen were dead. Another 1,000 or so claims were unsubstantiated.

Victims' advocates immediately decried the figures as low. "Thousands of victims haven't reported and dozens of bishops aren't telling all they know," said David Clohessy, national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "They have no incentive to."

The second review board report examines the causes of the molestation crisis and puts much of the blame on 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 the board, receiving survey responses from 97% of the nation's 195 dioceses, plus 142 religious communities.

The John Jay report also calculated abuse-related costs such as litigation and counselling at $572 million, and noted that the figure does not cover settlements within the past year, including $85 million in Boston.

The board came to no direct conclusions about whether gays should be ordained. However, it noted that " more than 80% of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature."