WASHINGTON (DC)
The Stream/Daily Caller Foundation [Washington D.C.]
January 21, 2025
By Jules Gomes
Bishops sell churches to pay settlements as insurance companies meet less than one-fifth of the expenses
The U.S. Catholic Church spent over $5 billion on victim compensation and attorneys’ fees in cases of clerical sex abuse of minors between 2004 and 2023, according to a new report by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
Released on January 15, the 106-page study records a total of 16,276 “credible allegations” of abuse of minors by priests, deacons, and religious brothers, which were reported by dioceses, eparchies, and men’s religious communities in the U.S. over the last two decades.
Victims of a ‘Lavender Mafia’
Four in five victims were male and one-fifth of the victims were female, the survey recorded, confirming reports by The Stream and other experts of a “lavender mafia” dominating the Latin-rite Roman Catholic priesthood.
More than half the victims were between ages 10 and 14 (56%) at the time the abuse occurred or began, with 24% ages 15 to 17 and 20% ages nine and younger.
The report estimated the number of perpetrators to be 4,490, with a combined 95% of all alleged perpetrators being priests, either diocesan (80%) or religious (15%). Four percent are religious brothers and 1% are deacons (diocesan or religious).
However, if religious brothers had been included on the survey prior to 2014, the number of them who were alleged perpetrators likely would have been larger, the report clarified.
Lawyers Benefit
Dioceses, eparchies, and men’s religious communities spent a grand total of $5,025,346,893 over 20 years on clergy sex abuse claims. Three-fourths of the sum was paid as settlements to victims (71%) and other payments to victims (4%).
The other major category of costs paid out was attorneys’ fees (17%), which make up one-sixth of the above costs. Six percent of costs were support for the clergy offenders, and 2% were for all other unspecified costs.
The money also include a whopping $727,994,390 spent over 20 years on abuse prevention efforts to protect children and youth. The U.S. Catholic Church now spends an average of $36,399,720 every year to protect minors from predatory priests and religious brothers, the study reported.
Over the 20 years of the survey, insurance companies bore only 16% of the total costs in clergy abuse claims occurring in dioceses and eparchies, and a mere 10% of the total costs for abuse allegations in religious communities of men.
Sex Abuse Results in Church Bankruptcy
Dioceses and religious orders were forced to bear the remaining 84% of the costs, resulting in bishops selling churches, reorganizing parishes, and filing for bankruptcies, with several dioceses explicitly citing the settlements as a reason to declare bankruptcy.
As of December 20, 2024, 40 U.S. Catholic organizations have sought bankruptcy protection in chapter 11, according to a database created by Marie T. Reilly, a professor at Pennsylvania State University Law School.
The costs of sex abuse have also devastated individual parishes. For example, every single parish in Long Island in the diocese of Rockville was forced to pay amounts ranging from five figures up to $1 million. Every one of the 136 parishes belonging to the diocese filed for bankruptcy and contributed $53 million toward the settlements, the National Catholic Reporter revealed.
Academics compiling the report explained their definition of “credible allegations” as cases where an “investigation has been completed and the allegation has been deemed credible/true based on the evidence gathered through the investigation.”
The allegation is deemed to be “credible” if has also been sufficiently substantiated by a preliminary investigation to be forwarded to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for action according to Canons 1717 and 1719, the compilers added.
Cost of Prevention Skyrockets
According to the survey, the highest number of abuse allegations were reported in 2019, with 2,506 credible allegations reported against clergy that year.
There was a 46% increase in the number of allegations deemed credible by dioceses, eparchies, and religious communities of men from the first decade of the survey (6,621 from 2004-2013) to the second decade (9,655 from 2014-2023).
Correspondingly, there was an 80% increase ($208,452,268) in the costs expended for child protection efforts by dioceses, eparchies, and religious communities of men in the second decade of the survey compared to the first.
According to the survey, more than nine in ten of all credible allegations occurred or began in 1989 or earlier (92%), 5% occurred or began in the 1990s, and 3% occurred or began since 2000.
Study Fails to Report Clergy Sex with Adults
The survey did not record complaints of clergy sexual misconduct, which would include violations of the requirement of celibacy through priests, deacons, and religious brothers practicing consensual clerical concubinage or engaging in casual sexual relationships with adult men or women.
While Dr. Jonathon Wiggins, a lead researcher on the report, hailed the Catholic Church’s “superlative commitment to transparency,” there is no official publication of clergy sexual misconduct with adults, and bishops remain reluctant to release data on the topic.
There is also no official record of the secret children of priests, an issue that remains “the sleeping giant that the Catholic Church prays will never fully awaken,” according to Brendan Watkins, author of Tell No One: The Son of a Priest and a Nun Uncovers Long-Buried Secrets.
In October 2024, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors said it would focus on “the experiences of children of priests and their mothers” as an area of research.
Report Silent on Abortions Procured by Priests
Further, the report fails to incorporate complaints against priests who have forced their sexual partners to have an abortion, despite a 2022 study on clerical sex abuse revealing that a significant number of priests who prey upon vulnerable women are forcing the victims they impregnate to abort the unborn child.
According to the study, titled “Reproductive Abuse in the Context of Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church,” between 1 and 10 percent of minors who are victims of clerical sex abuse may have been forced to abort their preborn baby.
According to the study authored by Dr. Doris Reisinger, a former nun who was raped by a priest, the total number of minors who are forced to abort their babies at the hands clergy is at least in the four-digit range in countries with a population between 70 and 80 million, and in the five-digit range in a country with a larger population like the United States.
“The immediate reaction of most clerical perpetrators who learn about their victims’ pregnancy is to persuade them to have an abortion,” said Reisinger, a research fellow in the department of Catholic Theology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
Correlating Celibacy, Homosexuality, and Abuse
According to Dr. Richard Sipe, a former priest and psychotherapist who died in 2018 and was considered one of the world’s leading experts on clerical sex abuse, mandatory celibacy has played a major part over the centuries in sex abuse.
In his groundbreaking book Celibacy in Crisis: A Secret World Revisited, Sipe concluded that only “2% of vowed clergy can be said to have achieved celibacy.”
At least “5% of priests are involved with problematic sexual behaviors — transvestitism, exhibitionism, pornography or compulsive masturbation,” Sipe wrote.
Around “40% of priests do practice celibacy, but their practice is not established enough to mark it as either consolidated or achieved. And indeed, these priests are open to sexual reversals and experimentation as well as progress,” he noted.
The Georgetown University survey also failed to draw any correlation between the numerical dominance of homosexuals in the Latin-rite priesthood, even though several experts have correlated the current sex abuse crisis with homosexuality.
“Although over 8 in 10 of victims have been boys, the idea that the abuse is related to homosexual men in the priesthood has not been widely accepted by Church leaders,” Catholic University of America sociologist Donald Sullins concluded in a 2019 research paper.
Almost all of the 195 U.S. dioceses and eparchies responded to requests for data on clergy sex abuse, but only 72% of the 223 religious communities of men participated in the survey.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.