Clergy child sex abuse allegations dramatically declined in 2005 over the previous year, but costs skyrocketed, according to the yearly audit on how the U.S. church is applying child protection policies.
Dioceses, Eastern-rite eparchies and religious communities paid out $467 million in child sex abuse-related costs in 2005, $309 million more than in 2004, while new credible allegations dropped by 28 percent to 783, said the audit report made public March 30.
Most of the money, $446 million, was paid out by dioceses and eparchies, with 49 percent covered by insurance. The payouts involved many cases reported in prior years.
When added to previously released costs, the U.S. church has paid out more than $1.3 billion on clergy sex abuse-related issues, mostly in settlements to victims, since 1950.
Besides allegations, the number of alleged victims and abusers dropped significantly.
The 783 allegations involved 777 people who said they were abused by 532 clergymen, almost all priests. Males made 81 percent of the allegations and over half of the cases occurred prior to 1980. About half of the accusers said the abuse started when they were between the ages of 10 and 14.
In 2004, there were 1,092 allegations by 1,083 people who said they were abused by 756 clergymen.
The audit also showed a drop to 88.5 percent in the percentage of participating dioceses and eparchies in full compliance in 2005 with the bishops' policies in the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. " In 2004, 96 percent were in full compliance.
The 2005 drop was mostly due to tighter criteria for implementing training classes in child sex abuse prevention. The other main problem area was conducting background checks on clergy, employees and volunteers.
The audit report was released at a March 30 news conference in Washington by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the USCCB Office of Child and Youth Protection and the National Review Board composed of 13 laypeople and established by the bishops to monitor compliance with the charter.
"It is clear that the church is moving forward and will continue to move forward," said Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., USCCB president, in a preface to the report.
"The clergy abuse crisis has challenged us in many ways, one of which called for a spiritual assessment of who we are as shepherds of the church," he said.
In separate cover letters to the report, Teresa Kettlekamp, executive director of the Office of Child and Youth Protection, and Patricia O'Donnell Ewers, National Review Board chairwoman, said future audits should shift from focusing on implementation to concentrating on judging the effectiveness of the programs.
The diocesan audits were done by the Gavin Group of Boston and the statistics on costs and new allegations were compiled by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, known as CARA, at Georgetown University in Washington.
The report said 191 of the 195 U.S. dioceses and eparchies participated in the audit. The Diocese of Lincoln, Neb., and the Melkite Eparchy of Newton, Mass., refused to participate, it said.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans and the Diocese of Beaumont, Texas, were exempted because of the damage they suffered in hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the report added.
For the CARA statistics, 94 percent of the dioceses and eparchies responded and 67 percent of the 221 religious communities responded.
The report said 22 dioceses were noncompliant with at least one of the 17 articles in the charter. Of these, 21 were noncompliant in implementing sex abuse prevention education and five failed regarding background checks. The Armenian Exarchate of the United States, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., was noncompliant with five articles, more than any other diocese or eparchy.
Regarding allegations deemed credible when made, 695 were against 463 diocesan clergy with one-third involving a clergyman who had no prior allegations against him.
Of the allegations against diocesan clergy, 90 percent were still deemed credible at the end of the year. More than half of the allegations were made against clergymen who were dead, missing or already removed from ministry.
For clergy in religious orders, new allegations declined by 55 percent since 2004 and the number of alleged offenders dropped by 49 percent. In 2005 there were 87 people making 88 allegations against 69 religious clergymen.
Most of the diocesan noncompliance involved training classes in child sex abuse prevention for clergy, lay employees, volunteers and children in church programs. The number of dioceses that were found noncompliant in this area jumped to 21 from 7 for 2004.
This reflected a stricter 2005 criteria requiring dioceses to complete training by the end of the year. In 2004, dioceses were compliant if they had selected and scheduled training even if the classes had not been completed.
Overall, dioceses significantly upped the number of people trained in 2005 in child sex abuse prevention. Almost 95 percent of the 7.7 million people needing training in 2005 received it, said the report.
In a cover letter accompanying the report, William Gavin, head of the Gavin Group, said the "most impressive statistic" in the audit is the number of children who received sex abuse prevention classes. There were 5.8 million children trained in 2005 as compared to 3.1 million in 2004, he said.
Five dioceses were found noncompliant regarding background checks on clergy, employees and volunteers, the same as in 2005.
Volunteers form the largest group of adults needing background checks and one of the problems involves how to deal with volunteers who are illegal immigrants, said the report.
"Many dioceses/eparchies verify basic information on undocumented immigrants or assign an undocumented individual to volunteer ministry under the supervision of a volunteer whose background evaluation has been completed," it said.
"One diocese has prepared a Child Safe Vendor list that includes the names of landscapers, general contractors, cleaning services and clowning groups who conduct background evaluations on their employees." ---CNS |