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.
Eric Stuart Joyce is a Scottish politician, former military officer and convicted child sex offender. A former member of the Labour Party, he served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Falkirk, formerly Falkirk West, from 2000 to 2015.
Maria Pia de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança, also known by her literary pseudonym Hilda de Toledano, was a Portuguese writer and journalist who claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of King Carlos I of Portugal. From 1932 she also claimed the right to the title of Duchess of Braganza and to be the rightful heiress to the throne of Portugal.
The Casa Pia is a Portuguese institution founded by Maria I, known as A Pia, and organized by Police Intendant Pina Manique in 1780, following the social disarray of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. For almost three centuries, thousands of young boys and girls were raised by Casa Pia, including many public personalities, called casapianos. Casa Pia is Portugal's largest educational institution dedicated to helping youngsters in risk of social exclusion or without parental support.
Gareth James Ward is an Australian politician who was the New South Wales Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services in the second Berejiklian ministry from 2019 to 2021. Ward is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and has represented the seat of Kiama since 2011. He was suspended from NSW parliament after being charged with sexual intercourse without consent, and indecent assault. He is currently awaiting trial, and continuing to act as the MP for Kiama on full pay.
Carlos Pereira Cruz is a Portuguese former radio and television journalist and talk-show host whose career ended after his involvement and criminal conviction in relation to the Casa Pia child sexual abuse scandal.
Milton Orkopoulos is an Australian convicted sex offender and former politician. A member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1999 to 2006, Orkopoulos was appointed Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Minister Assisting the Premier on Citizenship in August 2005.
Bernard Vincent Finnigan is an Australian former politician who served as a member of the South Australian Legislative Council from 2006 until 2015. He was appointed in May 2006 as a member of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party to the Legislative Council in a casual vacancy triggered by the death of Terry Roberts. Elected at the 2010 election, Finnigan briefly served in the Rann government cabinet from February until April in 2011, when Labor suspended him from the party, sitting thereafter as an independent backbencher until his 2015 parliamentary resignation. He was the Acting Police Minister at the time of his arrest.
Peter Duncan is an Australian Labor Party politician and one of the relatively few members of parliament to have served not only in both a state and national parliament but also as a minister in both cases.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
The Casa Pia child sexual abuse scandal was a case of child sexual abuses involving a number of children and employees at Casa Pia, a Portuguese state-run institution for the education and support of poor children and under-age orphans. One employee of the institution, which at the time comprised 10 orphanages and schools caring for 4,600 children, ran a male child prostitution network involving 100 boys. The scandal involved several prominent men, including TV presenter Carlos Cruz, former Casa Pia governor Manuel Abrantes, and former UNESCO ambassador Jorge Ritto. The trial was one of the longest running in Portuguese history, lasting more than five years, with testimony from 32 alleged victims, out of a total of over 800 witnesses and experts.
In areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the human rights record has remained considerably poor, and serious abuses have been committed. Unlawful killings, disappearances, torture, rape, and arbitrary arrest and detention by security forces increased during the year, and the transitional government took few actions to punish harsh people. Harsh and life-threatening conditions in prison and detention facilities; prolonged pretrial detention; lack of an independent and effective judiciary; and arbitrary interference with privacy, family, and home also remained serious problems. Security forces continued to recruit and retain child soldiers and to compel forced labour by adults and children.
Alasdair Paine Webster is a retired Australian politician.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, U.S., is a significant episode in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States, Ireland and elsewhere. The Philadelphia abuses were substantially revealed through a grand jury investigation in 2005. In early 2011, a new grand jury reported extensive new charges of abusive priests active in the archdiocese. In 2012, a guilty plea by priest Edward Avery and the related trial and conviction of William Lynn and mistrial on charges against James J. Brennan followed from the grand jury's investigations. In 2013, Charles Engelhardt and teacher Bernard Shero were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Lynn was the first official to be convicted in the United States of covering up abuses by other priests in his charge and other senior church officials have been extensively criticized for their management of the issue in the archdiocese.
Rishad Bathiudeen is a Sri Lankan parliamentarian and former senior cabinet minister. He is the leader of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC) Party, a registered political party in Sri Lanka. Bathiudeen was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) from the Vanni Electoral District in December 2001 and was re-elected in April 2004, after which he was again re-elected in April 2010 and 2015 June from the same Electoral District which comprises Vavuniya, Mannar and Mullathivu Administrative Districts. Rishad Bathiudeen holds a National Diploma in Technology (NDT) in Civil Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Engineering (C.I.E.) in the UK.
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.
The Mount Cashel Orphanage, known locally as the Mount Cashel Boys' Home, was a boys' orphanage located in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The orphanage was operated by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, and became infamous for a sexual abuse scandal and cover-up by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and NL justice officials.
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with 2.3 million youth members and approximately 889,000 adult volunteers in 2017. In 1979 there were over 5 million youths in BSA.
The 2016 South Korean political scandal, often called Park Geun-hye–Choi Soon-sil Gate in South Korea, was a scandal that emerged around October 2016 in relation to the unusual access that Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of shaman-esque cult leader Choi Tae-min, had to President Park Geun-hye of South Korea.
The Adass Israel School sex abuse scandal is a criminal case and extradition dispute regarding allegations of child sex abuse at a Jewish religious school in Melbourne, Australia. A former principal, Malka Leifer, faced trial on 70 sex offence charges laid by Victoria Police, with accusations from at least eight alleged victims. Leifer, a dual Israeli-Australian citizen, fled under suspicious circumstances shortly before a warrant could be issued, and remained in Israel from 2008 until January 2021, under varying levels of police and court supervision, pending the resolution of her extradition case. Leifer's trial did not address other alleged sex crimes in Israel and the West Bank because they did not occur in Australia.
