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By Karin Zeitvogel, Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON: The Roman Catholic church in the
United States paid out $615 million (400 million euros) last year
for child sex abuse cases involving members of the clergy, or 54
percent more than the previous year, an official report showed
Friday.
Of the monies paid out by the church, $526
million went to settling cases—almost double the amount paid out
in 2006, the annual report on how well the church is implementing a
charter to protect youngsters said.
Around $23 million was paid out for therapy for
victims or support for accused offenders, and $60 million for legal
fees, said the report, which was commissioned by the US Conference
of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
The report showed that 689 new allegations of
abuse were lodged last year—three percent fewer than in 2006—but
most involved cases dating back decades.
Most victims were male, and more than half were
between the ages of 10 and 14 when the abuse began.
While the number of new allegations has declined
from 2004 to 2007, costs related to allegations increased in the
same period, the report said.
Between 2006 and 2007 alone, “expenditure
related to allegations increased by 54 percent,” due mainly to a
near-doubling of the amount paid out for settlements in 2007, it
said, showing that other pay-outs had fallen.
The annual report tracks progress made in
implementing the Charter for the Protection of Children, which was
adopted by the bishops in 2002 after the church was plunged into
crisis when the Archbishop of Boston confessed that he had protected
a priest he knew had sexually abused young members of his cCardinal
Francis George of Chicago, president of the USCCB, said in a
statement Friday that child protection was a priority for the
bishops, and praised them for “working diligently to implement the
Charter.”
But Terry McKiernan, president of the
organization Bishop Accountability, which documents the abuse crisis
in the Roman Catholic church, said the report by the bishops was
opaque and fudged the number of clergymen who have been accused of
sexually abusing children.
“Because the report is only counting and not
actually naming the priests, we are not able to determine which of
these allegations pertain to priests already accused and which
pertain to new priests,” McKiernan told AFP by phone from Boston.
“This is nowhere near a complete accounting
from the bishops conference, but it’s better than nothing,” he
said.
McKiernan estimated that more than 5,000 priests
out of nearly 41,500 across the United States have been denounced
for sexually abusing children since the 1950s.
“We know that the number is considerably over
5,000 now, and that, on the basis of annual adjustments since the
John Jay report came out in 2004,” McKiernan said.
A report commissioned in 2004 by the USCCB from
the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Washington found that
nearly 4,400 priests had been accused of abuse.
This year’s progress report was published just
weeks before Pope Benedict XVI was due to visit the United States.
The visit next month will take him to New York
and Washington, but not Boston.
“It’s hard to not read the visit to New
York, where there is a real hold-out among the American
episcopate—Archbishop Edward Egan, who has been very restrictive
about information that might get out about this—as a reward, and
the skipping of Boston as expressing a desire not to confront the
issue,” said McKiernan.
“I don’t hope for any gestures on the part
of the pope,” he added.
“Remedies are going to come through the legal
system, not through the church.”
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