Frontline: Priests Molested " Nearly 80% of the Town's Children", New Civil Rights Movement, April 20, 2011

Frontline: Priests Molested " Nearly 80% of the Town's Children"

New Civil Rights Movement
April 20, 2011

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/frontline-priests-molested-nearly-80-of-the-towns-children/news/2011/04/19/19000

[with video]

Frontline's next exposé focuses on the "decades of abuse of Native Americans by priests and other church workers in Alaska," and in one particular town they find, "nearly 80% of the town's children were molested" by Catholic priests.

As we reported on this story just a few weeks ago, the Roman Catholic Church, as part of ongoing lawsuits, will make payments to approximately 700 male and female sexual and psychological abuse, molestation, and rape victims who were living in Alaska Native villages and Indian reservations from Montana to Washington, Idaho and Oregon, and who were "sexually or psychologically abused as children by Jesuit missionaries in those states in the 1940s through the 1990s," according to a statement by attorneys.

The latest agreement will financially compensate 524 victims with $166.1 million in cases including accusations against 140 Jesuit priests, brothers, and nuns from the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, in the Pacific Northwest. Only $48 million will come from the Catholic Church, the remainder will be paid by its insurance companies.

None of the Jesuit priests are being charged with any crime related to this abuse, rape, and molestation settlement.

The settlement comes through bankruptcy proceedings and is the largest by a religious order in the United States.

"Through candid interviews with survivors, this FRONTLINE report focuses on the abuse by a number of men who worked for the Church along Alaska's far west coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s," according to a Frontline press release. "All told, they would leave behind a trail of hundreds of claims of abuse, making this one of the hardest hit regions in the country. As part of FRONTLINE's new magazine program, The Silence airs as the lead segment on Tuesday, April 19, 2011, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS."