More than 3,600 children, most age 13 or younger, were sexually abused by Catholic clergy members over the past seven decades, a wide-ranging report has found.
The study, which was commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church bishops’ conference in Germany, found that at least 1,670 church workers had been involved in the abuse of 3,677 children. That is 4.4 percent of the clergy.
The study, conducted by researchers from three universities over more than four years, was an ambitious effort to understand the scale of the abuse — and how it could have been systematically covered up for so many decades.
“We are aware of the extent of the sexual abuse that is supported by the results of the study,” said Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier. “It is depressing and shameful.”
The findings have not yet been made public officially, but they were outlined in an eight-page summary obtained by The New York Times on Wednesday. They chronicle abuse cases from 1946 to 2014. Every sixth case of abuse involved rape, researchers found, and most of the victims were boys.
The German report was scheduled to be released on Sept. 25, but it leaked out and was first reported in the German newspaper Die Zeit on September 12.
Source: NY Times
