Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries have been widespread and have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions as well as revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases do not for the most part cover sexual harassment in the workplace against persons who had renounced sexual activity and therefore pre-declined sexual advances. This category includes all priests and seminarians and all religious brothers and sisters. The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
Ampleforth College is a coeducational independent day and boarding school in the village of Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1802 as a boys' school, and is run by the Benedictine monks and lay staff of Ampleforth Abbey. The school is in a valley with sports pitches, wooded areas and lakes. Its affiliated preparatory school, St Martin's Ampleforth, is across the valley at Gilling Castle.
Ecclesiastical Insurance is an insurance company in the United Kingdom founded in 1887. The head office is located in Gloucester.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, based in Ballarat, Australia, is a diocese in the ecclesiastical province of Melbourne. It is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Melbourne and was established in 1874. Its geography covers the west, Wimmera and Mallee regions of Victoria. The cathedra is in St Patrick's Cathedral, Ballarat.
Donald William Wuerl is an American prelate of the Catholic Church, and was Archbishop of Washington, D.C. from 2006 to 2018. He was elevated by Pope John Paul II to serve as Auxiliary Bishop of Seattle (1986–1987), and Bishop of Pittsburgh (1988–2006). He was named Archbishop of Washington by Pope Benedict XVI and made a cardinal by him in 2010. Wuerl was the subject of a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report that praised and criticized how he handled sexual abuse cases during his time in Pittsburgh. Wuerl has denied mishandling the cases. On October 12, 2018, Pope Francis accepted his resignation as Archbishop of Washington. Wuerl remained in charge of the archdiocese as its apostolic administrator until Pope Francis appointed his successor, Wilton Daniel Gregory, in 2019. He remains a member of the College of Cardinals, one of only ten American cardinals who could choose the next Pope.
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) is one of a range of measures introduced by the Irish Government to investigate the extent and effects of abuse on children from 1936 onwards. It is commonly known in Ireland as the Ryan Commission, after its chair, Mr Justice Seán Ryan. Judge Laffoy resigned on 2 September 2003, following a departmental review on costs and resources. She felt that: "...the cumulative effect of those factors effectively negated the guarantee of independence conferred on the Commission and militated against it being able to perform its statutory functions." The Commission's work started in 1999 and it published its public report, commonly referred to as the Ryan report, on 20 May 2009.
Philip Boyce, OCD, was consecrated and installed as the Catholic Bishop of Raphoe on 1 October 1995. From 1995 until 2017 he presided over the Diocese of Raphoe in County Donegal, Ireland.
This page documents Catholic Church sex abuse cases by country. The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has been documented by cases in several dioceses in European nations. Investigation and widespread reporting were conducted in the early 21st century related to dioceses in the United States of America; several American dioceses were bankrupted by settlement of civil lawsuits from victims. A significant number of cases have also been reported in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.
The sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne was investigated by the Commission of Investigation, Dublin Archdiocese, Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, examining how allegations of sexual abuse of children in the diocese were dealt with by the church and state. The investigation was led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, The Cloyne Report, and published in July 2011. The inquiry was ordered to look at child protection practices in the diocese and how it dealt with complaints against 19 priests made from 1996.
The sexual abuse scandal in Dublin archdiocese is a major chapter in the series of sexual abuse cases in Ireland. The Irish government commissioned a statutory enquiry in 2006 that published the Murphy Report in November 2009.
The sexual abuse scandal in Chicago archdiocese is a major chapter in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States and Ireland.
Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and scandals over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.
From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held a referendum to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion rights in 2018.
The ecclesiastical response to Catholic sexual abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the Church's child sexual abuse scandal. While this first reached national headlines in 1985, it did not surface as a major problem reported in all media until The Boston Globe published a series of articles in January 2002.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations.
The Murphy Report is the brief name of the report of a Commission of investigation conducted by the Irish government into the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin. It was released in 2009 by Judge Yvonne Murphy, only a few months after the publication of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse chaired by Seán Ryan, a similar inquiry which dealt with abuses in industrial schools controlled by Roman Catholic religious institutes.
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in Ireland established in 2006 in order to develop policies that would foster the prevention of child abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland. Its main goals are to offer advice on safeguarding best practice, to assist in the development of procedures and to monitor practices. Its members have a good deal of experience in dealing with the problem of sexual abuse. The Board has been described as "the Catholic Church's abuse watchdog".
Most prevalent among alleged cases of abuse by the Catholic Church and its agents are sex abuse cases of children. For instance, starting in the 1990s a series of criminal cases in Ireland and Irish government enquiries covered allegations that priests had abused hundreds of minors over previous decades. State-ordered investigations documented "tens of thousands of children from the 1940s to the 1990s" who suffered abuse at the hands of priests, nuns and church staff in three diocese.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a royal commission established in 2013 by the Australian government pursuant to the Royal Commissions Act 1902 to inquire into and report upon responses by institutions to instances and allegations of child sexual abuse in Australia. The establishment of the commission followed revelations of child abusers being moved from place to place instead of their abuse and crimes being reported. There were also revelations that adults failed to try to stop further acts of child abuse. The commission examined the history of abuse in educational institutions, religious groups, sporting organisations, state institutions and youth organisations. The final report of the commission was made public on 15 December 2017.
