WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - A new report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) confirms that the clerical sex abuse scandal is a crisis not of pedophilia but of homosexuality.
The USCCB annual report on clerical sex abuse, released Thursday, confirms earlier findings that the priest sex abuse crisis is a homosexual problem. According to the report, "Eighty-one percent of the victims were male," and when the age of the victim was determined, only "one in ten were under age ten." The report further confirmed that these findings were "similar to those reported for year 2015."
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice reported similar findings. After the sex abuse crisis exploded in the media in 2002 following the Boston Globe exposé, the USCCB created a National Review Board and tasked the John Jay College to conduct an investigation into clerical sex abuse. The College's 2004 report revealed that 80 percent of the victims were male, and almost 90 percent were post-pubescent. A report issued in 2011 affirmed these facts, finding 81 percent of sex abuse victims were boys, of which 78 percent were post-pubescent.
The 914 total allegations deemed credible were more than double the 384 claims filed the previous year. It represented the highest total, since 1,083 alleged victims were reported in 2004, the first year the USCCB published such statistics.
The report attributes the sharp increase to claims filed in Minnesota. "Most of the increase in allegations this year comes from the six dioceses in Minnesota due to the state opening its statute of limitations for such claims until May 2016," says the report. In 2013, Minnesota temporarily lifted its civil statute of limitations that had given child sex abuse victims until age 24 to sue.
According to the report, the 914 allegations of sexual abuse deemed credible stemmed from 730 claims against "a diocesan or eparchial priest or deacon," while the remaining 184 allegations were made against individuals "who were priest, brother or deacon members" of various religious institutes. Claims that were deemed not credible were placed "into one of four categories: unsubstantiated, obviously false, investigation ongoing or unable to be proven."
Most of the alleged offenders are either dead, laicized or missing. "About four-fifths of alleged offenders (82 percent) identified between July 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016, are deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized or missing," reads the report.
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