Religion

trotsky

(49,533 posts) Fri Feb 15, 2019, 11:49 AM Feb 2019

5 disturbing things we learned from the Catholic Church's list of 188 alleged sexual abusers in NJ

https://www.nj.com/data/2019/02/five-disturbing-things-we-learned-from-the-catholic-churchs-list-of-188-alleged-sexual-abusers-in-nj.html

Summarizing:

1. There are hundreds of victims.

2. The abuse spanned a century.

The priests and deacons named by the church were ordained between 1915 and 2017, showing that the issue of sexual abuse in the church is not a recent phenomenon.

3. The RCC, characteristically, shuffled abusive priests around, denying victims justice and granting abusers access to new victims. Repeatedly.

Data shows priests and deacons were shifting between parishes at a constant rate, ping-ponging around the state, country and the globe before dying or being forcibly removed from the ministry. From what information is currently available, dozens served at least ten separate parishes during their career with the church.

4. The abuse was often clustered.

The groupings take different forms. Some, like at Holy Trinity in Westfield, show parishes that were served by accused priests, with more than one accused priest serving the same parish at the same time. Immaculate Conception in Camden had nine accused priests or deacons who were ordained within slightly more than two decades of one another, indicating several were likely to be serving the parish at the same time.

5. The largest group of abusers were ordained in the 1960s and 70s.

Though the data spans more than a century, 111 of those named were ordained in the 1960s or 1970s — nearly 60 percent.