Priests Got Away With Raping and Abusing Children for Years

Catholic Priests and Sexual Abuse Issues

The ongoing sexual abuse scandal involving Roman Catholic priests and other church officials continues to shock the Christian world and has led to prosecutions, prison sentences, international embarrassment for a major world religion, and to the paying out of millions of dollars in reparations by the Church. This paper reviews the sexual abuses perpetrated by the Church, the number of cases involved, the impact of this abuse and the response to the abuse by the Church, the media, and the public.

Overview of the Abuse of Young Boys by Priests

The first public reports of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the United States were published in 2002, according to a peer-reviewed article by Karen J. Terry. At first it seemed that the perpetrators were American priests, but in a few years the scandal took on international implications, but the investigative journalism in the U.S. gave impetus to the larger scope of the problem.

In fact it was the Boston Globe that initially revealed abuse of boys in the Church. The allegations against "serial predator John Geoghan in the Boston Archdiocese" were widely disseminated, and the Globe published "more than 1,000 articles" from 2002 to 2004 (Terry, 2015). The scandal spread to Europe (Austria, Belgium, England and Wales, among other European countries), Canada, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, "…and even the Vatican" (Terry, 140).

Available Research on Sexual Abuse by Priests

The abuses reported by the Boston Globe and hundreds of other newspapers in the 2000s were not the first by any means but the recent revelations has led to the image of a "pedophile priest," Terry writes (141). Terry explains that a clinical study in 2003 showed that potentially 3,000 priests had abused minors (presumably mostly boys) over a 50-year period (141). Another clinical study reflected that 4% of priests "are sexually preoccupied with adolescent boys or girls, and 20-40% of priests engage in sexual misconduct with adults" (Terry, 142). A study by the Center for Applies Research reported that "5%of priests in ministry since 1950 have allegations of abuse against approximately 15,000 minors" (Terry, 142). Are these abusive priests actually pedophiles? Are they gay and because they are not allowed to marry they enjoy experiencing illegal sex with boys? There are many more questions than there are answers to these perplexing problems, but a telling statistic is that the vast majority (81%) of victims of priests' misbehavior are male (Terry, 143).

How the Church has Addressed the Problem

For several years the Bishops in several regions of the U.S. tried to hide the truth about these felonious incidents. They even knew in many cases that a priest under their authority was in fact molesting children, according to a piece in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (Dale, et al., 2007). Pope John Paul II blamed institutions that were "beyond the church's control," and he blamed the "media, society (particularly American society), and the mysterious presence of evil in the world" (Dale, 64).