Catholic sex abuse cases
Clerical sexual abuse allegations have
been made against Roman Catholic priests,
monks, and nuns. Several major lawsuits
were filed in 2001 alleging that Catholic
priests had sexually abused minors.[1] Some
priests resigned, others were defrocked or
jailed,[2] and financial settlements totaling in
the hundreds of millions of dollars were
made with many victims.[1] The cases be-
came ongoing national news in the U.S. with
the accusations made against Paul Shanley
and John Geoghan, and publicized by the Bo-
ston Globe in 2002.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]
The United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops
commissioned a comprehensive
study that found that four percent of all
priests who had served in the U.S. from 1950
to 2002 faced some sort of sexual accusa-
tion.[13][14] According to this report, common
actions included touching adolescent males
under their clothes and removal of clothing,
but more serious acts were committed in
many cases. The Church was widely criti-
cized when it was discovered that some bish-
ops knew about allegations and reassigned
the accused instead of removing them,[1][15]
although school administrators engaged in a
similar manner when dealing with accused
teachers[16], as have the Scouts[17] and Je-
hovah’s Witnesses[18]. Some bishops and psy-
chiatrists noted that the prevailing psycho-
logy of the times suggested that people could
be cured of such behavior through counsel-
ing.[15][19] Many of the abusive priests had
received counseling before being reas-
signed.[14][20]
Church policies and
attitudes
Order of silence in the 1960s
In 1962 Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the Sec-
retary of the Holy Office, issued an instruc-
tion dealing with solicitation by priests in the
confessional, Crimen sollicitationis (Instruc-
tion on the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of
Solicitation). The document dealt with any
priest who "tempts a penitent... in the act of
sacramental confession... towards impure or
obscene matters." It directed that investiga-
tion of allegations of