A new report confirms OSV News’ previous finding that U.S. Catholic dioceses and eparchies have paid more than $5 billion to settle abuse claims filed over the past two decades — but credible allegations have declined significantly over the same period, with the majority of cases preceding a landmark set of anti-abuse protocols established by the U.S. bishops in 2002.
Catholic dioceses, eparchies and parishes in the U.S. have “changed how they do things” in terms of addressing and preventing abuse, said Jonathan L. Wiggins, sociologist and director of parish surveys at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
On Jan. 15, CARA — which conducts social scientific studies on the Catholic Church — released a 20-year summary of annual data for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ yearly report on the implementation of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”
CARA’s two-decade review of the numbers indicates that the charter is working, and that the Catholic Church in the U.S. is making real progress in eradicating the scourge of clerical abuse, said Wiggins.
Since 2004, CARA has collected and prepared data for the USCCB on the charter’s implementation, using both web-based and mail-in surveys.
The CARA surveys complement the annual audit of dioceses and eparchies conducted by a USCCB-commissioned third-party firm, which since 2011 has been StoneBridge Business Partners, a Rochester, N.Y.-based consulting firm that provides forensic and compliance services to a range of organizations.
Catholic dioceses and parishes in the U.S. have “completely reformed how they recruit people, how they report,” Wiggins said. “They’ve made a public invitation to bring allegations (forward). They do background checks on everyone, not just at the diocesan level but in parishes. They train people about sex abuse.”
For the period 2004-2023, a total of 16,276 allegations of minors by priests, deacons and religious were deemed credible by dioceses, eparchies and religious communities in the U.S.
During the 20-year survey period, said the report, “a majority of dioceses, eparchies, and religious communities of men did not have a credible allegation, with an average of three in five (60 percent) having no allegations in a particular survey year.”
The summary report said that “more than nine in ten of all credible allegations occurred or began in 1989 or earlier (92 percent), 5 percent occurred or began in the 1990s, and 3 percent occurred or began since the year 2000.”
Most of the alleged perpetrators — 86 percent — “were identified as ‘deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized or missing,'” said the report.
