‘300 priests sexually abused 1,000 children’

WASHINGTON: More than 300 “predator” priests in Pennsylvania are accused of abusing over 1,000 children across seven decades, a grand jury said on Tuesday in a devastating report that decried a systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church.

It is thought to be the single most comprehensive report into abuse in the US church, since The Boston Globe first exposed paedophile priests in Massachusetts in 2002.

But while Tuesday’s report led to charges against two priests, one of whom has pleaded guilty, the majority of those responsible are dead and the vast majority of crimes happened too long ago to prosecute, officials said.

The two-year investigation by a grand jury into all but two Pennsylvania dioceses turned up dozens of witnesses and half a million pages of church records containing “credible allegations against over 300 predator priests”.

Over 1,000 child victims were identifiable, but the “real number” was “in the thousands”, the grand jury estimated, given those children whose records were lost or who were afraid to ever come forward.

Victims were often traumatised for life, driven to drugs, alcohol and suicide, the grand jury said.

The only recourse was to recommend changes to the law and expose what had happened to make sure such widespread abuse was never repeated.

One cleric raped a seven-year-old girl in hospital after she had her tonsils out, the report said. Another child drank juice, only to wake up the next morning bleeding from his rectum and unable to remember what had happened.

A priest forced a nine-year-old boy to give him oral sex, then rinsed out his mouth with holy water to “purify him”. Another priest abused five sisters, including one from the age of 18 months to 12 years.

When the youngest victim of the family told her parents in 1992, a police search of the priest’s home found panties, plastic containers of pubic hairs, vials of urine and sexually suggestive photos of young girls.

The church ignored credible allegations against him for years, and the priest died awaiting trial, Pennsylvania’s attorneygeneral Josh Shapiro said.

“The pattern was abuse, deny and cover up. As a direct consequence of the systematic cover-up by senior church officials, almost every instance of child sexual abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted.” – AFP