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There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. 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 for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, 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.
The 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 cathedral is in St Patrick's Cathedral, Ballarat.
Oliver Francis O'Grady is an Irish laicized Catholic priest who molested and abused at least 25 children in California from 1973 onwards. His abuse and Cardinal Roger Mahony's attempts to hide the crimes are the subject of Amy J. Berg's documentary film Deliver Us from Evil in 2006.
Philip Boyce, OCD, was Bishop of Raphoe from 1 October 1995 until 2017.
The Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle is a suffragan Latin Church diocese of the Archdiocese of Sydney, established in 1847 initially as the Diocese of Maitland and changed to the current name in 1995. The diocese covers the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions of New South Wales in Australia. The bishop of the diocese is Michael Kennedy
The Diocese of Clogher is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It was formed in 1111 at the Synod of Rathbreasail as the see for the Kingdom of Uí Chremthainn. It is part of the Province of Armagh.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
As distinct from abuse by some parish priests, who are subject to diocesan control, there has also been abuse by members of Roman Catholic orders, which often care for the sick or teach at school. Just as diocesan clergy have arranged parish transfers of abusive priests, abusive brothers in Catholic orders are sometimes transferred.
The sexual abuse cases in Dublin archdiocese are major chapters in the series of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Ireland. The Irish government commissioned a statutory enquiry in 2006 that published the Murphy Report in November 2009.
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 referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.
Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. Italy is an exceptional case as the 1929 Lateran Treaty gave the Vatican legal autonomy from Italy, giving the clergy recourse to Vatican rather than Italian law.
Gerald Francis Ridsdale is an Australian laicised Catholic priest and sex offender. He was convicted between 1993 and 2017 of a large number of child sexual abuse and indecent assault charges against 65 children aged as young as four years. The offences occurred from the 1960s to the 1980s while Ridsdale worked as a school chaplain at St Alipius Primary School, a boys' boarding school in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat.
The parish transfers of abusive Catholic priests, also known as priest shuffling, is a pastoral practice that has greatly contributed to the aggravation of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children, rather than seeking to have them permanently returned to the lay state by laicization. The Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about some of the alleged crimes committed, but reassigned the accused instead of seeking to have them permanently removed from the priesthood.
This article summarises convictions and allegations of child sexual abuse by clergymen in the Raphoe Diocese, Ireland.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Latin America is a significant part of the series of Catholic sex abuse cases.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Salesian Order is a major chapter in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in various Western jurisdictions.
Tony Walsh is a former Irish Roman Catholic priest who was convicted of child sexual abuse. In 2010, Walsh was convicted and had a 16-year sentence imposed on him "for the rape and abuse of three schoolboys."
14% of New Zealand Catholic diocesan clergy have been accused of abuse since 1950. Several high profile cases are linked to Catholic schools.
Several allegations of child sexual abuse have been made against clergy, members of religious orders and lay members of the Anglican Communion for events dating as far back as the 1960s. In many cases, these allegations have resulted in investigations, trials, and convictions.
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Fr Eugene Greene: jailed in 2000". The Irish Times .
- ↑ "BBC News - 85 priests were accused of abuse - Catholic Church reviews". Bbc.co.uk. 30 November 2011. Retrieved 7 March 2013.
- ↑ "Before Pope Francis' visit, Ireland rages at abuse within Catholic Church - The Star". Toronto Star . 24 August 2018.
- ↑ Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko de (24 August 2018). "Pope to Visit Ireland, Where Scars of Sex Abuse Are 'Worse Than the I.R.A.'". The New York Times .
- 1 2 3 Martin Ridge; Gerard Cunningham (1 April 2008). Breaking the Silence: One Man's Quest to Find the Truth About One of the Most Horrific Series of Sex Abuse Cases in Ireland. Gill Books. pp. 29–. ISBN 978-0-7171-6345-8.
- 1 2 "Notorious paedophile priest was caught out by his own arrogance - Independent.ie".
- ↑ "Pedophile priest so cocky he went to police when threatened by victim". 12 August 2011.
- ↑ "Retired priest sentenced to twelve years for abuse". RTÉ.ie . 6 April 2000.
- ↑ "Fr Eugene Greene: jailed in 2000". The Irish Times .
- ↑ O'Hagan, Sean (21 June 2015). "Ireland's shadowlands: Kim Haughton's haunting journey to sites of sexual abuse". the Guardian.
- ↑ "Paedophile former priest Eugene Greene dies". Donegal News. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
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