UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
Matt Rocheleau GLOBE STAFF MAY 20, 2016
The Catholic church paid $153 million in the United States last year to settle lawsuits, and fielded hundreds of new accusations, as fallout continued from the clergy sex abuse scandal exposed in the early 2000s, a new report from church leaders says.
The annual report from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which covers July 2014 to June 2015, said 384 victims came forward with allegations the church deemed credible.
The figure, while somewhat higher than the 330 allegations deemed credible in the prior year, generally fit into a trend in which the number of such allegations has declined in recent years.
“One instance of abuse is one too many,” Deacon Bernie Nojadera, executive director of the conference’s Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, wrote in the report.
“May our Lord continue to heal all who have been victimized by this crime and may our efforts toward healing, reconciliation, and peace be blessed,” he added. …
David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, was sharply critical of the bishops’ annual reports, calling them “flawed” and “deceptive.”
“Bishops’ policies, procedures, protocols, and panels sound good. But they are meaningless because there’s no independent monitoring or enforcement,” Clohessy wrote in an e-mail. “It’s as if bishops design the game, hire the umpires, and declare themselves winners.” …
Mary Gautier, a senior research associate there who worked on this year’s report, said the number of abuse allegations has generally declined each year as spending has increased on programs designed to protect youth in the church.
“It shows the proactive attitude of the dioceses, that they’re taking this seriously,” she said.
But Terence McKiernan founder of Bishop Accountability, an organization that tracks the abuse crisis, said holes still remain in the church’s annual reports, including one introduced when the report last year began using a different reporting period for some data.
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