COLORADO
Rocky Mountain News
By Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News
March 31, 2006
Six priests were reported as alleged sexual abusers to Catholic Church authorities in Colorado in 2005; all of the incidents are at least several decades old and some happened outside the state.
The data were reported as part of an annual survey on sexual abuse released Thursday by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The survey showed that U.S. dioceses reported 783 credible allegations of sexual abuse against children last year, a 28 percent decline from the year before, according to the survey, compiled by a department at Georgetown University, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
The survey was first commissioned in 2002 by Catholic bishops as part of an annual accountability program on sexual abuse allegations, called the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
The survey found that 87 percent of the national allegations involved incidents that happened before 1990. Nine allegations, or 1 percent, involved victims who were minors in 2005, according to the survey.