UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport
Dave Pierre
The newly released annual audit of abuse in the Catholic Church reports that only seven credible abuse allegations were made against Catholic priests by current minors in all of 2011.
Yet nationally syndicated articles from the Associated Press’ Rachel Zoll and Reuters’ Andrew Stern might have you believe that child abuse is currently a major problem infecting the Catholic Church.
Both journalists are trumpeting the fact that decades-old abuse claims increased in 2011, but not bothering to mention the status of current allegations.
In truth, the number of credible accusations alleging abuse by a Catholic priest against a current minor went down. For 2010, the number of such allegations was eight. For 2011, the number went down to seven. (If there are roughly 41,406 Catholic priests in the United States, seven credibly accused priests would represent .000169 (or 0.0169%) of all U.S. priests.)
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