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VIRTUS is a program created by the National Catholic Risk Retention Group in the United States with a "Protecting God's Children" component that combats sexual abuse of children in the Church. It is currently in use in over 80 dioceses in the United States.
In response to the growing public awareness of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Monsignor Kevin McCoy and Rev. Edward J. Arsenault of the National Catholic Risk Retention Group asked their colleagues how sexual abuse could be prevented.
This led to a convening of national experts in Washington, DC in March 1998, where discussion led to the concept of the VIRTUS program. An Ad Hoc committee was chosen by the National Catholic Board of Directors to implement the project.
The VIRTUS program began with a consulting team, including:
The goal of the VIRTUS program is primarily to be proactive instead of reactive when dealing with child sexual abuse. To prevent sexual abuse, VIRTUS advocates five steps:
VIRTUS focuses on educating teachers, parents, and other adults who interact with children about sexual abuse and providing them with information to help prevent abuse. This takes place in 'awareness sessions' led by trained facilitators. The awareness sessions consist of videos, worksheets, and discussions. The videos incorporate interviews with both victims and convicted perpetrators.
In addition to its most common Protecting God's Children program, VIRTUS also has Victim Advocacy Training and VIRTUS Investigation Training. The Protecting God's Children program is also available in an online form.
The creation of the VIRTUS program is similar to efforts in other Christian churches to help prevent child sexual abuse. One such program is Safe Sanctuaries, through the United Methodist Church.
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, nuns, Popes and other members of religious life. In the 20th and 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.
Various individuals, courts and the media around the world have raised concerns about the manner in which cases of child sexual abuse are handled when they occur in congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses. An independent 2009 study in Norway was critical of how Jehovah's Witnesses dealt with cases of child sexual abuse but stated there is no indication that the rate of sexual abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses is higher than found in general society. The organization officially "abhors" child sexual abuse, and states "the incidence of this crime among Jehovah's Witnesses is rare."
The Diocese of Wichita is a Latin Catholic ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Kansas. It covers Allen, Bourbon, Butler, Chase, Chautauqua, Cherokee, Cowley, Crawford, Elk, Greenwood, Harper, Harvey, Kingman, Labette, Marion, McPherson, Montgomery, Morris, Neosho, Reno, Rice, Sedgwick, Sumner, Wilson, and Woodson counties in south central and southeast Kansas. The diocese is home to 112,549 Catholics in 90 parishes. The Diocese of Wichita is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.
Deliver Us from Evil is a 2006 American documentary film that explores the life of Irish Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady, who admitted to having molested and raped approximately 25 children in Northern California from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Written and directed by Amy J. Berg, it won the Best Documentary Award at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, though it lost to An Inconvenient Truth. The title of the film refers to a line in the Lord's Prayer.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle is a suffragan Latin Rite 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 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 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.
Saint Luke Institute (SLI) is an international, U.S.-based private, licensed mental health education and treatment facility that is based in Silver Spring, Maryland. SLI primarily serves Roman Catholic priests, permanent deacons, and consecrated men and women religious with depression, addictions, anxiety, trauma and stress-related disorders, personality disorders, interpersonal and boundary issues, and other mental health issues that may require clinical attention.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston sex abuse scandal was part of a series of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in the United States that revealed widespread crimes in the American Roman Catholic Church. In early 2002, TheBoston Globe published results of an investigation that led to the criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests and thrust the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy into the national spotlight. Another accused priest who was involved in the Spotlight scandal also pleaded guilty. The Globe's coverage encouraged other victims to come forward with allegations of abuse, resulting in numerous lawsuits and 249 criminal cases.
Stephen Joseph Rossetti is an American Catholic priest, author, educator, licensed psychologist and expert on psychological and spiritual wellness issues for Catholic priests. He has appeared on such television shows as Meet the Press and Larry King Live. He served as president and CEO of Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland from 1996 to 2009 and as president from 2013 to 2014. In October, 2009 Rossetti stepped down from this position and in January 2010, joined the faculty of The Catholic University of America to teach in the School of Theology and Religious Studies. Since 2009, he has also served as the chaplain of the Washington Nationals.
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.
The media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the pederastic priest scandal.
The sexual abuse scandal in Providence diocese is a significant episode in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States and Ireland.
Aquinas Walter Richard Sipe was an American Benedictine monk-priest for 18 years, a psychotherapist and the author of six books about Catholicism, the clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and clerical celibacy.
The Curial response to Catholic sexual abuse cases was a significant part of the Church's response to Catholic sexual abuse cases. Its policies have shifted from favoring secrecy in the 20th century to active reform and apologies in the 21st century. Under the current leadership of Pope Francis, the issue has been addressed through direct instructions to report cases of sexual abuse and revoking the former policies of secrecy.
Transnational efforts to prevent human trafficking are being made to prevent human trafficking in specific countries and around the world.
14% of New Zealand Catholic diocesan clergy have been accused of abuse since 1950. Several high profile cases are linked to Catholic schools.
A grand jury investigation of Catholic Church sexual abuse in Pennsylvania lasted from 2016 to 2018, and investigated the history of clerical sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses.
Patrick Daniel Cotter was an Irish-born Catholic priest who was incardinated in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in Australia from 1938 to 2007.
Phillip James Saviano was an American advocate for survivors of Catholic church sexual abuse. As a youth, Saviano was abused by a priest in the early 1960s. Thirty years later, after reading about the priest abusing other youths in another state, Saviano went public, becoming one of the earliest survivors of church sexual abuse to do so. He brought a lawsuit against his local diocese, uncovering evidence of additional abuse. Eventually, his investigation led to The Boston Globe publishing a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles exposing the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston sex abuse scandal, which was dramatized in the 2015 Academy Award-winning film Spotlight.
