UNITED KINGDOM
Premier
Thu 30 Jul 2015
By Antony Bushfield
The Catholic Church has said it defrocked 55 priests for clerical sex abuse since 2001.
In new figures released today the Church said they had been removed from the priesthood after new rules were put in place to protect children and vulnerable adults.
The Church said in addition it has received many more complaints about sexual misconduct by members of the clergy.
Officials said there had been a number of cases involving child abuse images where the victims could not be found, meaning the actual number of victims was hard to know.
The number of “covenants of care” orders, withdrawing people from ministering and severely restricting what they could do in the Church, increased from 384 at the end of 2013 to 462 at the end of 2014.
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