Allegations of Sexual Abuse at Catholic Residential Institutions in the United States This webpage provides a sample of Catholic residential institutions in the United States where sexual abuse of minors has been alleged or accused clerics have worked. Many aspects of the allegations in these cases will be familiar from the Ryan report on abuse in Irish institutions. • In Washington State, the Christian Brothers of Ireland settled with two dozen alleged victims in a single residential school. • In Wisconsin, the director of a school for the deaf admitted to sexually abusing at least 30 boys and may have molested 200 or more. • In Vermont, church officials settled with 75 men and women alleging physical and sexual abuse of shocking brutality at an orphanage. • In Kentucky, an order of nuns settled with 45 men and women alleging physical and sexual abuse at another orphanage.

The table currently provides information on 31 residential institutions where 112 priests, brothers, nuns, seminarians, and lay people have been accused of sexually abusing children. In addition, 6 persons who are accused of sexual abuse elsewhere also worked at an institution on our list. For a report on our residential institution project and two institutions in the Boston archdiocese, see A Search For Links Between U.S., Irish Church Abuse, by Deborah Becker, WBUR (8/12/09).

The large numbers of alleged victims, the horrific nature of the abuse, and the advantage taken of entirely vulnerable children in 24-hour care, all link these U.S. cases unmistakably with the Irish situation. Ireland’s system of Catholic residential institutions for children was centralized and state-financed, whereas in the United States, the situation was more diverse. Residential institutions for Native Americans in the Western United States were state-financed but staffed by men and women religious, whereas orphanages and homes for disabled children were run by dioceses and religious orders. Yet there were financial and operational connections between the state and the Catholic institutions.

Almost every diocese had its orphanages, residential schools for the handicapped, and minor seminaries. Both the Irish and American systems endured robustly into the 1980s and in several cases into the 1990s. The Catholic church still operates many U.S. orphanages to this day. In fact, the 2009 edition of the Official Catholic Directory lists 403 orphanages currently operated by the Catholic church in the United States, up from 279 in 1960.

In both countries, inspection and supervision were lax to nonexistent, and in the resulting vacuum, children were tortured and raped. In the United States, brutal and depraved regimes often thrived in dioceses run by eminent bishops, and in Vermont, a future bishop is alleged to have abused an orphan at one of the worst institutions.

These institutions were often staffed and operated by international religious orders with shared policies and practices and a global population of priests, brothers, and nuns.

It is an urgent question, whether institutional abuse in the United States was similar in scope and depravity to the abuse analyzed in the Ryan report. The sample presented below would suggest that it was. BishopAccountability.org has launched a project to assess the breadth and depth of institutional abuse in the Roman Catholic church in the United States. We urgently request that anyone with articles, documents, or other information contact us at staff@bishop-accountability.org. This database will be updated frequently as our research progresses. The latest update began on March 7, 2013 and is in progress.

The priests, brothers, nuns, and lay people listed in each institution have been accused of abuse there, unless it is noted that they have been accused of abuse elsewhere but not, to our knowledge, at the institution in question. For best printing of this table, click Properties in your Print dialogue box and select Landscape.

BishopAccountability.org is also at work on several projects that are related to our analysis of abuse in Catholic residential institutions in the United States:

• We are preparing an enhanced web version of the Ryan report, hyperlinked to allow readers to navigate the report more easily and to access sources that complement the report. One Irish survivor has expressed the hope that the Ryan report will not just gather dust on a shelf. We aim to keep the Ryan report in plain view.
  
  
• We are compiling a database of Irish priests who were subsequently sent to work in the United States and have been accused of abuse. Irish readers would put Rev. Brendan Smyth, O. Praem., at the top of the list, and American readers will be familiar with the cases of Rev. Oliver F. O'Grady and Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell. There are many others. We are fortunate to be working on this project with Mr. Joe Rigert, author of An Irish Tragedy, the best account of abuse in the Irish and American churches and the links between them.
  
  
• Then we will post a database of publicly accused Irish priests, using the same methods we have employed in our database of accused priests in the United States, which contains information on over 3,000 accused priests, brothers, and nuns. The database of Irish priests will depend on allegations published in the media and documented in publicly available court documents, and as such, it will present only part of the total picture. But it will be a start. We have much to learn about the Irish situation, and we are grateful to knowledgeable persons in Ireland who have already contacted us to offer their help.
  We invite friends in Ireland to contact us at staff@bishop-accountability.org.

For more information on these projects, see U.S. Watchdog Preparing Report on Child Abuse, by Kevin Cullen, Irish Times, June 20, 2009.

Note: This table does not state or imply that individuals facing allegations are guilty of a crime or liable for civil claims. The sources cited in the table document allegations. The U.S. legal system presumes that a person accused of or charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Similarly, individuals who may be defendants in civil actions are presumed not to be liable for such claims unless a plaintiff proves otherwise. Admissions of guilt or liability are not typically a part of civil or private settlements.

In the U.S. legal system, all accused persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty. This table is based solely on allegations reported publicly in the media or publicly filed in the courts. BishopAccountability.org, Inc. does not confirm the veracity of any actual allegation, and this table is not a representation of the legal case history of the individuals listed herein.

Please send suggestions for adding documents to staff@bishop-accountability.org.