At a time of heightened national concern about the need to track sex offenders, the Catholic Church in America has begun cutting loose dozens—perhaps hundreds—of priests who have molested children.

The church had already suspended the clerics after finding the child-abuse allegations against them to be credible. Now, as it defrocks them, expelling them from the priesthood, the men are quietly reentering civilian life with only the barest notice to the public, and no ongoing oversight by the church.

Nor is law enforcement certain to be watching them.

In most instances, the statute of limitations in their cases expired years ago. This means they face no prospect of prosecution for past sex offenses.

"As a citizen, I would be concerned and would want to know if such an individual was living on my block," said Capt. John Darby, head of the Philadelphia police Special Victims Unit, which investigates sex crimes.

But only convicted sex offenders' names appear on "Megan's Law" public registries checkable by neighbors, Darby said - and few of the defrocked priests were ever charged or convicted.

The church sex-abuse scandal, and the "zero tolerance" policy that the bishops enacted in response, has led thus far to nine defrockings in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and one in the Camden Diocese. Observers say hundreds more U.S. priests await decisions by the Vatican.

To critics, the church is washing its hands of a problem it helped create by failing to alert police to the abuse reports years ago, when they were first received.

"If, indeed, a person is a true predator, the institutional church still has an obligation to maintain some vigilance over him," said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, an early whistleblower on priest abuse, and now a prominent advocate for victims.

When an abuser is not kicked out, "at least there's some monitoring and maintenance and therapy," Doyle said.

The bishops' own National Review Board, a lay advisory body set up under the church's 2002 child-abuse-protection charter, raised the same concern.

In assessing that charter, the board wrote: "Both experts and board witnesses have noted that the public may be protected more effectively if such priests remain under church oversight rather than if they are laicized [defrocked] and live in the secular world without any oversight."

So far, no accusations have surfaced that any of the men have molested again since they were defrocked. But as Bucks County District Attorney Diane E. Gibbons cautioned, "Children don't report [abuse] immediately."

In Pennsylvania, child sex abuse can be prosecuted only if victims report crimes before they are 30. New Jersey's cutoff is age 23 for lesser sex offenses, with no limit on sexual assault that occurred after May 1991.

One Philadelphia priest who was suspended from ministry in 1993, but not yet defrocked, went on to teach at three area private schools. School officials learned of Martin J. Satchell's past only in June, when the church announced his defrocking - a dozen years after he was accused.

Satchell passed the criminal history check needed to work as a teacher in Pennsylvania. But educators said they would not have hired him had they known that he had once been accused of molesting a teenage boy.

Defrocking is the church's harshest penalty and is applied to the most serious offenders. It is a secretive process that takes place between Rome and individual U.S. bishops.

Interviews with 15 experts inside and outside the church provide a picture of a procedure that advances at an unpredictable pace, with bishops having wide discretion over which suspended priests to expel.

Bishop Joseph Galante of Camden, who championed the zero-tolerance policy while a member of the U.S. bishops' sex-abuse committee, said defrocking is meant to prevent abusers from exploiting "the trust and respectability" of the clergy.

Abuse-victim groups generally applaud its use.

"It can be healing to some victims to see severe consequences, especially for the most egregious predators," said David Clohessy, national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

But the process protects the church as well.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on church governance and former editor of the Jesuit magazine America, noted that defrocking ends a diocese's legal and monetary risk.

"The lawyers are saying, 'If you keep him and he does it [molests] again, your liability is big time,' " said Reese, who recently quit the magazine amid Vatican complaints that its contents were too freewheeling.

Once rare events, defrockings have been announced in dioceses across the nation in recent months. In notices inside its newspaper, the Philadelphia Archdiocese announced nine last month.

Petitions to laicize American priests have poured in to Rome in the last few years in such numbers - estimates range from 400 to more than 1,000 - that the Vatican brought in a team of U.S. canon lawyers to help process the backlog.

Galante said he seeks to expel abusive priests in their 60s or younger, who have a chance of finding other work.

"Or, if they're a real predator," he said, he seeks laicization regardless of age.

The Camden Diocese has defrocked one priest—James F. Hopkins, who in March received eight years in prison for abusing a 10-year-old boy—and is awaiting word from Rome on petitions to defrock six others.

A seventh case was sent back to Camden for a church tribunal, which is pending, Galante said. An eighth was returned "on a technicality" - the victim's age was in doubt - for the bishop to handle as he saw fit. He said that priest was now "on permanent suspension."

The nine defrocked in the Philadelphia Archdiocese range in age from 54 to 73. The archdiocese declined to say whether it had petitioned the Vatican to defrock any other priests, and if so, how many.

Under the church charter, a bishop can exempt a cleric from defrocking if he is elderly or infirm, or when the allegation cannot be proven because too much time has passed.

Camden has 16 priests in that category, with an average age of 71, who get ongoing "treatment and spiritual guidance," said diocesan spokesman Andrew Walton. He said eight of them live in church facilities that restrict their activities.

The other eight have opted to live on their own—though if they relocate or act suspiciously, the church contacts authorities, Walton said.

He said that, in one instance, the diocese had alerted police after learning that one of the priests had had minors in his home. Investigators determined that the youths had been there to do repairs. No charges were filed.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has set up a residence for suspended priests at the annex to Villa St. Joseph, its residence for retired priests, in Darby. They agree to live there instead of being defrocked, and undergo "a supervised life of prayer and penance," with their activities monitored, according to the archdiocese.

Ten other suspended priests, over 75 and infirm, live in the main Villa St. Joseph retirement building, where they, too, are watched and counseled, the archdiocese said.

When priests are defrocked and leave its oversight, the archdiocese said, it does not notify civil authorities or maintain contact with the men.

In a statement, the archdiocese said it had given prosecutors names and files of all priests accused of misconduct.

Ernie Allen, head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, says the church should stay involved. "The last thing society needs is for these men to blend back in and achieve anonymity," Allen said.

"Maybe we can't register them," he said, but the church can push former priests to get "therapy and follow-up care."

Walton, the diocesan spokesman, said Camden would do what it could.

Though church law is silent on care for the defrocked, he said, the church has a duty to "look after" such men - "first out of charity, and then out of concern for the community."

The Camden Diocese is prepared to "strongly encourage" defrocked priests to keep getting church counseling and spiritual guidance, Walton said.

Still, once defrocked, former priests who haven't been convicted of crimes are free agents.

Prospective employers "should ask the proper questions" of these men, said the Rev. Arthur Espelage, executive coordinator of the Virginia-based Canon Law Society of America.

"But beyond that, I don't see what clearly can be done. How can you protect society in every way? It can't be done."

Contact Faith Life editor Jim Remsen at 215-854-5621 or jremsen@phillynews.com