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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 Catholic Church in Canada, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, and has a decentralised structure, meaning each diocesan bishop is autonomous but under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. As of 2021, it has the largest number of adherents to a Christian denomination and a religion in Canada, with 29.4% of Canadians being adherents according to the census in 2021. There are 73 dioceses and about 7,000 priests in Canada. On a normal Sunday, between 15 and 25 percent of Canada's Catholics attend Mass.
The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease.
St. Charles College is a Catholic Secondary School located at 1940 Hawthorne Drive in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The school motto is "Goodness Discipline and Knowledge" and is based on the Basilian motto, Bonitatem et disciplinam et scientiam doce me, which comes from Psalm 119 of the Bible, - Teach me good judgement and knowledge: for I believe your commandments.
Roger Adrian Herft is a former bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia. He was the Archbishop of Perth from 2005 to 2017. He was previously the Bishop of Newcastle from 1993 to 2005 and the Bishop of Waikato in New Zealand from 1986.
Eugene Greene was a Catholic priest in the Raphoe diocese of the County Donegal, Ireland. In 1999, he was arrested for abusing 26 boys between 1965 and 1992. In 2000, Greene was sentenced to 12 years in prison, of which he only served nine. He was released in 2008.
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.
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.
Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Canada are well documented dating back to the 1960s. The preponderance of criminal cases with Canadian Catholic dioceses named as defendants that have surfaced since the 1980s strongly indicate that these cases were far more widespread than previously believed. While recent media reports have centred on Newfoundland dioceses, there have been reported cases—tested in court with criminal convictions—in almost all Canadian provinces. Sexual assault is the act of an individual touching another individual sexually and/or committing sexual activities forcefully and/or without the other person's consent. The phrase Catholic sexual abuse cases refers to acts of sexual abuse, typically child sexual abuse, by members of authority in the Catholic church, such as priests. Such cases have been occurring sporadically since the 11th century in Catholic churches around the world. This article summarizes some of the most notable Catholic sexual abuse cases in Canadian provinces.
The debate on the causes of clerical child abuse is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding Catholic sex abuse cases.
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.
Several cases of sexual abuse in St. John's archdiocese have been reported, starting in 1988. It is an important chapter in the series of clerical abuse affairs that occurred in the dioceses of Canada.
James M. Cantor is an American-Canadian clinical psychologist and sexologist specializing in hypersexuality and paraphilias.
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.
George G. Epoch was a Canadian priest, a member of the Jesuit Fathers of Upper Canada. From 1971 to 1983, Epoch abused over 120 children at the Jesuit mission of Wikwemikong and St Mary's church of Cape Kroker and Saugeen, all of which are first nations reserves in Ontario, Canada.
Survivors Rowe is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Daniel Roher and released in 2015. The film profiles three of the victims of Ralph Rowe, a former Anglican Church of Canada priest who was convicted in 2012 of sexual abuse against First Nations boys from the Nishnawbe Aski Nation in Northern Ontario.
Gordon Goichi Nakayama was Japanese Canadian Anglican priest, author and pedophile. He was active in his ministry in Western Canada and the Pacific Rim for 62 years from 1932 to 1994. G.G. Nakayama has been the subject of controversy surrounding the Anglican Church and their handling of child abuse claims. In 2015 the Anglican Church of Canada revealed that it had received a written confession from Nakayama of his abuse in 1994, and apologizing for withholding the information from the public and the police for over 20 years.
Pope Francis visited Canada from July 24 to 29, 2022, with stops in the provinces of Alberta and Quebec and the territory of Nunavut. The trip mainly focused on apologizing for the Catholic Church's role in the Canadian Indian residential school system and on reconciliation with the country's Indigenous peoples. It was the first papal visit to Canada since 2002, when Pope John Paul II visited Toronto for World Youth Day.
References
- ↑ Porter, Jody (May 11, 2015). "Survivors of ex-priest pedophile say he deserves more prison time". CBC News . Retrieved January 28, 2018.
- ↑ "Apology from Anglican Church over legacy of Ralph Rowe is very important, Bennett says". Toronto Star . January 23, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
- 1 2 Talaga, Tanya (2018-10-13). "When you grow up surrounded by suicide, it seems normal. How do you heal a 'broken spirit'?". Toronto Star . Retrieved 2018-10-13.
- ↑ "Sex-Abuse Victims of Scoutmaster Ralph Rowe Still Coming Forward". Indian Country Today. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ↑ "Survivors Rowe premieres at Hot Docs". CBC News Thunder Bay, April 22, 2015.