UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Researchers find drop in giving in areas hit by sex abuse scandal
Editorial: The deep, lasting financial cost of sex abuse
Jack Ruhl Diane Ruhl | Nov. 2, 2015
The U.S. Catholic church has incurred nearly $4 billion in costs related to the priest sex abuse crisis during the past 65 years, according to an extensive NCR investigation of media reports, databases and church documents.
In addition, separate research recently published calculates that other scandal-related consequences such as lost membership and diverted giving has cost the church more than $2.3 billion annually for the past 30 years.
Between 1950 and August of this year, the church has paid out $3,994,797,060.10, NCR found.
That figure is based on a three-month investigation of data, including a review of more than 7,800 articles gleaned from LexisNexis Academic and NCR databases, as well as information from BishopAccountability.org and from reports from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Up until now, “nearly $3 billion” has been the most widely cited figure by media, academics and activists for the cost to the U.S. church for clergy sex abuse and its cover-up. NCR research shows that figure is too low, probably by as much as a billion dollars — and perhaps much more.
Making direct comparisons between NCR figures and official figures from the bishops’ conference is difficult, perhaps impossible, for a number of reasons:
* There are no uniform reporting standards for public disclosure of financial records for U.S. Catholic dioceses. For example, of the 197 dioceses and eparchies that are members of the U.S. bishops’ conference, NCR could find only 60 that had made some kind of public financial report available for 2014. Previous reporting (NCR, Feb. 27-March 12) found the quality of these financial disclosures varies dramatically. Very little information about how much a particular diocese spent on counseling for victims of abuse or for monitoring priest offenders can be found in these reports.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.