UNITED STATES
Chicago Tribune
By Andrew Stern
CHICAGO, April 10 (Reuters) – The number of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors committed by Roman Catholic priests or deacons in the United States rose 15 percent last year, and the church spent $144 million to deal with the ongoing scandal, according to a church-sponsored audit released on Tuesday.
A total of 489 people reported credible allegations of abuse by priests or deacons in 2011, the bulk of them involving adults victimized when they were children decades ago by now-deceased clerics, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a report on its ninth annual audit of the issue.
Twenty-one of the victims were younger than 19 and victimized more recently. Attorneys for victims say there are likely tens of thousands more victims who have never come forward since the scandal erupted in Boston in 2002.
“We renew our promise to strive to the fullest to end the societal scourge of child sexual abuse,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the conference, said in an introductory letter to
the report.
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