Sexual abuse by priests in the USA

Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and scandals over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.

The issue of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests was first publicized in 1985 when a Louisiana priest pled guilty to 11 counts of molestation of boys. It was again brought to national attention when a number of books on the topic were published in the 1990s, and again in 2002 following a series of publications by the Boston Globe.

As it became clear that there was truth to many of the allegations and that there was a pattern of cover-ups in a number of large dioceses across the United States, the issue became a nationwide scandal, creating a crisis for the Catholic Church in the United States. Allegations in the United States also encouraged victims in other nations to come forward, rapidly creating a global crisis for the Church. Over many decades, priests and lay members of religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church had sexually abused children on such a large scale, that the accusations reached into the thousands. A major aggravating factor was the actions of Catholic bishops to keep these crimes secret and to reassign the accused to other parishes in positions where they had continued unsupervised contact with youth.

Many of the accused priests were forced to resign or were laicized. In addition, several bishops who had participated in the cover-up were also forced to resign or retire. The dioceses in which the crimes were committed found it necessary to make financial settlements with the victims totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The revelations nationwide led to a "zero tolerance" policy by the National Council of Catholic Bishops. Reported incidences since that time have dropped substantially and, when they occurred, been reported by the church itself.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas paid $30.9 million in 1998 to twelve victims of one priest ($46.4 million in present-day terms).

In early 2002, the Boston Globe covered the criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests in an article that won an uncontested Pulitzer Prize. The issue of child rape and sexual assault of Roman Catholic children became a national scandal. The coverage of these cases encouraged others to come forward with allegations of abuse, resulting in more lawsuits and criminal cases.

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