By Karin Zeitvogel and Christopher Lawton
Irish Examiner
March 25, 2010
http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/drop-in-clerical-sex-abuse-reports-but-400-new-cases-in-us-last-year-115505.html
UNITED STATES -- THE number of new child sex abuse allegations against Roman Catholic clergy in the US and Church payouts for clerical sex abuse cases fell sharply last year, a report commissioned by US bishops said Tuesday.
Some 400 new allegations of clerical sex abuse were reported in the United States in 2009, down from 620 cases in 2008 and 889 in 2004, when the first report tracking child predators in the US Catholic Church was issued.
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In 2008, the US Catholic Church paid out $376m, and in 2007, costs related to abuse allegations against priests peaked at $499m.
The fall in clerical sex abuse cases was "good news" for the US Church and "a sign of the progress we have made" since sex scandal rocked the US Catholic Church in 2002, said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which commissioned the report.
But a leading support group for victims of clerical abuse said the report's data were not only suspect but also amounted to an admission that sex abuse by priests and deacons was still widespread.
"These numbers come from most of the same bishops who concealed and enabled clergy child sex crimes for decades. They are inherently suspect, to say the least," the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement.
The figures also amounted to an admission by US bishops "that more than once a day last year, they got reports of clergy sex crimes", SNAP said.
Of the 398 new sex abuse victims reported in the 2009 report, 251 were aged 10-14 when the alleged offences began, and 61 were younger than 10.
The vast majority of the abuse cases reported – 88% – dated from decades ago, with only a handful said to have begun last year.
According to the figures listed in the report, for every five-year period from 1955 until 1990, there were at least 20 cases of clerical child sex abuse, with a high of 79 cases from 1975 to 79.
From 2000-2004, only five new cases were reported, and between 2005 and 2009, there were nine new cases, the report said.
But SNAP dismissed the vastly lower recent figures, saying that "very few child victims are able to disclose the crimes as they happen".
"There always has been and will be decades between the actual offence and the reporting of it," the support group said.
Meanwhile, the German government agreed yesterday to set up roundtable talks to tackle a wave of child sexual abuse cases, including numerous allegations of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church that have shocked the country.
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