Related Research Articles
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.
Ivan Payne is an Irish Roman Catholic priest and convicted child molester.
The Anglican Diocese of Tasmania includes the entire Tasmanian state of Australia and is an extraprovincial diocese of the Anglican Church of Australia.
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 Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, established in 1989, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization support group of survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their supporters, founded in the United States. Barbara Blaine, a survivor of sex abuse by a priest, was the founding president. SNAP, which initially focused on the Roman Catholic Church, had 12,000 members in 56 countries as of 2012. It has branches for religious groups, such as SNAP Baptist, SNAP Orthodox, and SNAP Presbyterian, for non-religious groups, and for geographic regions, e.g., SNAP Australia and SNAP Germany.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
Paul Roger Butler is a retired British Anglican bishop and a former Lord Spiritual of the House of Lords. He was installed and enthroned in Durham Cathedral on 22 February 2014 and was the Bishop of Durham, the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Durham, from 20 January 2014 to 29 February 2024. On 12 September 2013 it was announced that he had been appointed as bishop-designate of Durham He was previously bishop of Southwell and Nottingham. He was installed at Southwell Minster on 27 February 2010. He served as the suffragan bishop of Southampton in the Diocese of Winchester from 2004 until 2010.
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.
This article summarises convictions and allegations of child sexual abuse by clergymen in the Raphoe Diocese, Ireland.
14% of New Zealand Catholic diocesan clergy have been accused of abuse since 1950. Several high profile cases are linked to Catholic schools.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a royal commission announced in November 2012 and 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.
Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history. In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child. However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.
Child sexual abuse is a matter of concern in Australia, and is the subject of investigation and prosecution under the law, and of academic study into the prevalence, causes and social implications.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in England and Wales was an inquiry examining how the country's institutions handled their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse. It was announced by the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, on 7 July 2014. It published its 19th and final report on 20 October 2022.
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.
Vincent Gerard Ryan was an Australian Catholic priest convicted of sexually abusing 37 children. He was first charged in October 1995 and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. Ryan was the first Catholic priest in the Newcastle, New South Wales, region to be charged with child sexual abuse, and one of the first in the world to be convicted of such abuse.
References
- ↑ "Nolan Report: Child abuse checks are urged for all priests ; NOLAN REPORT Catholic Church urged to set up database to screen for paedophiles and bishops must not have power to overrule selection boards - The Independent (London, England) | HighBeam Research". 2 November 2012. Archived from the original on 2 November 2012. Retrieved 6 August 2024.
- ↑ "Nolan Review - Final Report". 14 March 2016. Archived from the original on 14 March 2016. Retrieved 6 August 2024.
- ↑ "Scottish Catholic Church Responds to Nolan Report". Archived from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 6 August 2024.
- ↑ "News Features". www.catholicculture.org. Retrieved 6 August 2024.
- ↑ "Nolan will head Catholic review into child abuse". The Daily Telegraph . 13 September 2000. Archived from the original on 27 February 2016.
