Cardinal George Pell Denies Sex Offense Accusations: Church Sex Abuse by the Numbers

By Sean Rossman
USA Today
June 29, 2017

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/06/29/cardinal-george-pell-denies-sex-offense-accusations-church-sex-abuse-numbers/438560001/

The Catholic Church's decades-long sex abuse scandal inched closer to the Vatican on Thursday, when Australian officials charged Pope Francis' chief financial adviser with sexual offenses.

The case of Cardinal George Pell sheds more light on the ongoing crisis involving thousands of allegations, accused priests and millions if not billions in legal settlements.

The cases at the center of the Oscar-winning film Spotlight are only one part of the story. Here's what we know about the Catholic sex abuses in the U.S.

6,528 clerics accused

BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts-based website dedicated to documenting Catholic sex abuse cases, calculated 6,528 clerics have been accused of sexually abusing minors from 1950 to 2015.

The statistics were compiled by reports posted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The accused clerics make up 5.6% of priests who served from 1950 to 2015.

In Guam alone, advocates say there could be as many as 200 sex abuse lawsuits against the island's clergy.

Most of the accused were priests

Among the documents cited by BishopAccountability.org is a study from John Jay College researchers, who found 69% of the accused from 1950 to 2002 were diocesan priests.

A quarter of them were pastors and nearly half of them were associate pastors at the time of the abuse, according to the study, "Context for the Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests."

10,667 individual abuse reports

By 2003, 10,667 individual reports of sex abuse by priests were made to U.S. dioceses.

Millions, maybe billions of dollars in settlements

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said settlements for Catholic sex abuse cases have been estimated in the range of $400 million to $1.3 billion.