News > Culture > While Catholics Don't Hold a Monopoly...

news
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 10 2004 9:18 PM

While Catholics Don't Hold a Monopoly...

Submitted by Christopher

Edited by Christopher

...they may certainly have what seems to be a quorum on sex abuse claims. Associated Press reports that the Catholic Church is holding an accounting of all of the sexual abuse claims in the United States. The total, with only half the dioceses reporting, comes to 1,341 separate abuse claims. Independent groups claims abuse allegations to be around 1,800. This averages between six and nine priests per diocese since the 1950s.
Bishops who have already done accounting state that there can be as much 2,870 abuse allegations, or 15 priests per dioceses.

"Bishops chose to get the hard data ... to make sure the steps they've taken are adequate to addressing the problem," said Monsignor Francis Maniscalco, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "This is an unprecedented study of a single profession. It takes the risk of concentrating even further attention on the Catholic priesthood a problem that is a human problem, that is engaged in by members of a family in regard to other members of their family."

The Catholic church has also paid $186.1 million dollars to settle abuse allegations, This averages between $64,000 and $138,000 dollars per incident, not adjusted for inflation, over the last 50 years.