The Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, commissioned by the Minister for Justice and Equality, Ireland, makes a serious comment about the long history of CSA prevalence among clerics. “There is a two thousand year history of Biblical, Papal and Holy See statements showing awareness of clerical child sex abuse” (Murphy et al., 2009, p. 5). There have been studies which verify the multiple accusations of child sexual abuses against clerics, including the Pope, Bishops and priests (Hansen, 2015, p. 11). UN reports say that clerics are involved in the sexual abuse of thousands of children worldwide and accuse the Vatican of not acknowledging the extent of the prevalence (United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2014, sec. 43).
However, for the first time, the Vatican revealed complete statistics on the number of child sexual abuse cases reported to the Holy See. It says that between 2004 and 2014 the Vatican received 3,400 credible cases of child sexual abuse where there was an involvement of Catholic clergy. Regarding those cases, 848 priests were defrocked and 2,572 were given lesser penalties. Lesser penalties were given mainly because the offenders were elderly or infirm, but they were put in a place where they did not have any contact with children (Ohlheiser, 2014, para. 3). These numbers include all cases directly handled by the Vatican. There are also some cases dealt with by local diocesan tribunals. Therefore, the total number of defrocked priests or otherwise disciplined priests is higher than shown here (Williams, 2014, para. 18).
The US clerics accused for child sexual abuse cases were 2,982 in between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019. In US, there were 838 victims in 903 allegations in the year 2015; and 1,232 victims in 1,318 allegations in 2016; 652 victims in 693 allegations in 2017; 1,381 victims in 1,451 allegations in 2018 and 4,220 victims in 4,434 allegations in 2019 (Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, 2020, p. 27–29). According to John Jay’s study, 10,667 individuals filed allegations regarding child sexual abuse against 4,392 US Catholic priests, between 1950 and 2002. This was 4% of all priests who were inactive ministry during that period (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2004, pp. 3–4). In Australia, according to a Royal Commission report, there were 4,444 claimants alleging incidents of clerical child sexual abuse (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017a, p. 20). There were 1,080 alleged perpetrators including 693 non-ordained religious (37%), 572 priests (30%), and 543 lay people (29%) (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017b, p. 5).
The report of an independent commission initiated by Catholic Church in France, arrived at an estimate of 330,000 child victims who have suffered sexual assaults at the hands of priests, deacons religious workers and persons connected to the Church (staff of Catholic schools, laypersons providing catechism or chaplaincy services, organizers of scouts or other Catholic youth movements) over the period from 1950 to 2020. The estimated number of clergy and religious workers as aggressors were between 2,900 and 3,200 (Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, 2021, pp. 9–10). A study commissioned by the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference found that 3,677 victims accused 1,670 clerics for child sexual abuse in Germany (Dreßing et al., 2019, p. 389). According to a report published by Polish Bishops’ Conference, 292 priests were accused in 368 child sexual abuse allegations in the years 1958–2020 (Office of the Polish Bishops’ Conference Delegate for the Protection of Children and Youth, 2021, para. 1).
In India, no official surveys are available on clerical child sexual abuse incidents. Journals have reported a handful of child sexual abuse events involving clergy in the last few years. Some of them were punished by the legal process. But they were not numerous. However, this does not guarantee the absence of child sexual abuse among clergies in India. More studies are needed in this area to understand the reality. The reality of each single victim and each clerical child sexual abuse offender demand a better human formation in seminaries, to prevent any possible child sexual abuse within the Church in the future.