Catholic Sex Abuse Facts

An anonymous poster wrote the following under the post "True Humility".  His/Her comments can be found here.  According to the poster: 

"You all defend Fr. John as if you know the truth, but none of you do. There have been many known predator priest in the history of the Church, who have never been convicted in the court of man. The Church handled these incidents internally, usually keeping it secret to protect the image of the Church. It is no longer that way today, thanks to organizations like SNAP, except here onGuam where our Arch protects himself and the interest of the NCW. Shame on all of you who would discredit the actions taken by the L.A. Archdiocese, without even knowing the details of the cases against Fr. John. You would rather risk the safety of children for the sake of your selfish pride."

 

Here are a few Catholic sex abuse facts that was conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), the independent research organization out of Georgetown University, which has been tracking abuse data regarding United States Catholic clergy for several years.  According to their data: 

 

Almost all accusations against Catholic priests date from many decades ago, and indeed nearly half of all abuse accusations concern priests who are already long dead.  In a body of 77 million people, contemporaneous accusations of abuse against Catholic clergy in the United States are very rare, recently averaging only 8 allegations deemed "credible" by review boards each year. 

 

According to CARA, here are the numbers of accusations involving a current minor that were even deemed "credible" each year from 2005 to 2013:

Year / # of accusations

2013	10
2012	6
2011	7
2010	8
2009	6
2008	10
2007	4
2006	14
2005	9

Catholic Facts

 

Now, let us look at Los Angelos.  there are 211 accused individual cases in the L.A. Archdiocesan, which goes back to 1932.  Out of that 211 (of which Father John is listed on), how many of those cases are credible is unknown.   According to that report, the allegation of Father John took place between 1973-1977, which is approximately 41 years ago.  The information is found in this weblink: 

 

http://bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbylastName-W.html

 

So, according to that report, the 2 incidents of child abuse that took place in which Father John was accused of was between 1973-1977, which is approximately 41 years ago.  No other incident of child abuse took place after that.  Then in February, 2004, the names of 211 priests were listed.  The weblink below provides an insight of what was going on at the time of 2004. 

 

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/usccb/natureandscope/dioceses/losangelesca.htm

 

According to the news report (bold is my emphasis):  Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, said recent actions by the archdiocese to remove a once high-ranking priest from a San Marino parish as well as the decision to reveal the names of 211 priests accused of wrongdoing had provided evidence that the archdiocese was keeping its word.

 

After receiving the names of 211 priests, the Archdiocese  of L.A. banned these priests regardless of whether they were falsely accused or not.  Today is the year 2014.  To this day, Father John has no lawsuit against him.  To this day, there has been no arrest and/or conviction.  In addition, there has been no other report of sexual abuse by Father John since 1977.  The law says that an accused person is innocent until found guilty in a court of law.  In the case of Father John, he is still innocent.  And if there is any credible evidence of his guilt, I would think it would show up by now after 41 years.