NEW YORK
Newsday
BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER
February 19, 2005
Clergy sex abuse may no longer dominate the headlines, but 1,092 new allegations - including a handful from the Archdiocese of New York - were made last year, with the scandal's price tag now topping $800 million, Roman Catholic officials said Friday.
None of the new complaints from the archdiocese involved active priests, said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese.
"We received a few allegations last year involving priests who were deceased or who were already out of ministry," he said.
Nationwide, most of the alleged incidents also occurred decades ago and involved priests who had either died or been previously removed from ministry, or laicized, said Kathleen McChesney, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection in Washington, D.C.
"The crisis of sexual abuse of minors within the Catholic Church is not over," she said. "What is over is the denial that this problem exists."