AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun
February 9, 2017
There is no doubt Catholic priests abused hundreds of Australian children. There is no doubt church leaders scandalously covered it up.
But Geoffrey Luck shows there is also little doubt that the counsel assisting the commission has exaggerated the extent of abuse with figures she released last week.
The Church had been required to undertake a comprehensive data survey. First, it had to provide the total number of priests, brothers and sisters in all its authorities from 1950 to 2010. This number was not produced. Then it was asked for the total number of people who had alleged incidents of abuse. This is where the much-quoted number 4444 came from…
Third, the survey identified 1,880 “alleged perpetrators”, including 500 who were unknown (presumably not named). This resulted in an inability to be confident that there was not at least some double-counting.
Analysis of this raw data produced the overall figures for alleged abuse by priests and religious brothers and sisters, as well as the break-down by diocese and society. The figure for priests was 7%, which, if correct, indicates that 93% of all Catholic priests were and are innocent of child abuse…
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