CATHOLIC PRIEST SEXUAL ABUSE

A 91-page report by Attorney General Tom Reilly confirms the sexual abuse of at least 789 children and maybe more than one-thousand, by 250 priests and workers of the Archdiocese of Boston, which has taken place since 1940. This report is a result of evidence gathering over a 16-month criminal investigation. Since the state's child abuse reporting law was not applicable since it did not include priests until 2002, the senior archdiocese managers did not report the suspected child sexual abuse to authorities despite evidence. Thus criminal charges could not be brought against the archdiocese and its senior managers ("Report details," 2003).

Steinfels (2002) reported that there is a current "flood of revelations" about Catholic priests who are preying on minors and Catholic officials are failing to expose these claims. Panichas (2002) stated that newspaper columnists have attempted to analyze the church scandals. Steinfels noted that public polls of Catholics have re

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on was granted to cover 552 lawsuits involving hundreds of victims ("Boston archdiocese settles," 2003). The Archdiocese of Louisville paid $25.7 million in settlement for sexual abuse by clergy lawsuits ("Archdiocese plans for recovery after $25.7 million," 2003). On the other hand, the church has worked to protect and guard against sexual abuse. Revisions to the U.S. bishops' norms of sexual abuse provide for procedures to deal with offending priests. While these rigorous procedures may be viewed as thwarting the claims of victims or clogging the justice system, Archbishop Herranz, one of the four Vatican representatives on the commission that revised the norms, stated that this was not the case. In fact there are already U.S. church tribunals that handle clerical sex abuse cases. In fact there are tribunals that have been used to handle over 35,000 marriage cases, and the number of clerical sexual abuse cases are rare. Herranz stated that there are approximately 230 cases of priests that have been disciplined in 2002 for sexual abuse incidents that have taken place over a 40-year-period ("Vatican official," 2002). In summary there is a history of priest sexual abuse. Stinfels (2002) stated that from 1985 to 1993 bish
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Approximate Pages = 41 (250 words per page)

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