Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Monday, May 23rd, 2016

Catholic church audit shows spike in sex abuse reports

Author:     Scott Malone
Source:     The Gazette/Reuters
Publication Date:     May 20, 2016 at 6:46 pm
 Link: Catholic church audit shows spike in sex abuse reports
Stephan:   The next stories should be seen as a group. First of all they are contemporaneous reports. Second they all deal with the correlation of dysfunctional sexuality with religion, particularly conservative Theocratic Rightist religion. Media reports on individual incidents or findings,  but few in media have been willing to  talk about this linkage. In my view, next to the individual human distress, that is the story. Highly religious social cohorts make controlling sexuality, particularly female sexuality, an obsessive consideration. I have chosen this selection of stories, believe me there are others, to show this problem is not particular to any one faith, and to demonstrate how it produces the dysfunctionality.
Roman Catholic cardinals

Roman Catholic cardinals

BOSTON — An annual audit of reports of sexual abuse by members of the U.S. Roman Catholic clergy shows sharp increases in the number of new claims and in the value of settlements to victims. (emphasis added)

The audit, released on Friday (May 20), showed that 838 people came forward from July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2015, to say they had been sexually abused by priests, deacons or members of religions orders while they were children, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said.

That is up 35 percent from 620 new reports of abuse a year earlier, an increase that the bishops said largely reflected a large number of claims in six dioceses that had either filed for bankruptcy or were located in states that opened windows allowing victims to sue over old cases of sexual assault.

While the bulk of the reports related to cases of abuse date back to the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, there were 26 reports made by minors of more recent abuse.

The report also found that Catholic […]

Read the Full Article