US Catholic Church sees 1,092 new sex abuse claims

WASHINGTON - The US Roman Catholic Church received 1,092 new claims of priest sexual abuse last year and paid more than US$157 million to deal with them, according to an audit of the pedophile scandal released today.

"The crisis of sexual abuse of minors within the Catholic Church is not over," Kathleen McChesney, head of the US church's Office of Child and Youth Protection, told reporters.

"What is over is the denial that this problem exists, and what is over is the reluctance of the church to deal openly with the public about the nature and extent of the problem."

This audit, the second report on the church response to the pedophile scandal that erupted in 2002, was made public four days after one of the most notorious pedophile offenders, defrocked priest Paul Shanley, was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison for raping a boy in the 1980s.

The audit tallied the number of new complaints, the amount spent on them and the percentage of American dioceses that are complying with 2002 charter aimed at ending priest sexual abuse.

David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, criticized the report for failing to measure how effectively the church has helped victims and prevented offenses.

"We owe it to innocent children and vulnerable adults to insist on hard evidence and solid data before determining progress is being made," Clohessy said in a statement outside the news conference where the audit was released.

Of the 1,092 allegations reported in 2004, most involved incidents between 1965 and 1974, McChesney said.

The charges involved at least 756 priests and deacons, and the vast majority of victims - 78 per cent - were male. Most were between the ages of 10 and 14 when the abuse began.

Twenty-two allegations were made last year by children under the age of 18 and all of these were reported to law enforcement, she said.

Of the 194 dioceses audited last year, 74 per cent were in already in compliance with the church charter and most of the remaining 26 per cent complied by the end of 2004, said William Gavin of the Gavin Group, which conducted the audit.

Gavin said the most common deficiencies were in parts of the charter that called for training to create safe environments and for background evaluations of parish personnel.


- REUTERS