igh of relief. We are not invisible. We do count enough, to someone, to be found, seen and heard" (p. 20). On March 9, 2003, victims of this abuse met at a parish in the Archdiocese of St. Paul, Minneapolis. Victims included men and women who wept as they met one-on-one with church representatives who apologized for the perpetrators. One older woman (60 years) stated that she was "still afraid to speak publicly about her abuse despite nine years of working through the trauma" ("Victims of sexual abuse, 2003, p. 5).
Steinfels (2002) reported that the public perceives that there is a very large number of priests involved in victimizing minors, church authorities simply reassign these molesters to another parish which facilitates these crimes, churches are involved in rebuffing victims with courtroom tactics rather than providing pastoral care, and the church is involved in a massive cover-up that involves hiding cases from legal authorities. In reality, it appears that while the behavior of the abusing priests is shocking, this conduct took place thirty or more years ago and most of these offenders have retired, died, or been removed from active priesthood. A minority of offenders remain active and they have been reassigned to posts that are away from young people. In fact since 1993 there are only a few priests with these past allegations that remain in parish duties and most are in the hands of the law.
However, even this information may or may not be accurate since there are 195 separate dioceses that have operated over the course of many years under many different bishops. The numbers of priests who have served the U.S. Church within this time period and are under investigation, number up to one hundred thousand. Stories are reliant on different sources and cover different time frames and thus differ in numbers. There is no central source with reliable data. There is no distinction between past and present (Steinf...