Investigators examined the period from 1950 to 2019. Serious allegations were made against more than 450 church officials.
Serious allegations against the Catholic Church in the United States: According to the prosecutor, almost 2,000 children have been abused by more than 450 clergymen in the state of Illinois in the past few decades. That emerges from a detailed report of the investigators, which was published in Chicago.
It is the state’s first comprehensive record of child sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church, it said in a statement. This formally concludes the investigation launched by the public prosecutor in 2018. Investigators examined the period from 1950 to 2019 for the report.
Reports ignored or covered up
The stories told by survivors show a disturbing pattern in which the church has failed to support those affected, it said. Reports of abuse have been ignored or covered up. At the beginning of the investigation, dioceses in Illinois had publicly named a significantly smaller number of clergymen against whom there were “credible” allegations of sexual abuse of minors. Eventually, prosecutors urged the Illinois dioceses to name other suspected ministers.
Decades of decisions and strategies by Catholic leaders have allowed known perpetrators to go into hiding, often in public, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul now said. “And because the statute of limitations has often expired, many survivors of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy will never experience legal justice.”
Investigations in many states
In recent years, several major abuse scandals in the Catholic Church in the United States have been uncovered – including in the US state of Pennsylvania. Since then, the authorities have been investigating in many states. New cases keep coming to light.
Cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church have also gradually become public to a frightening extent worldwide. In Germany, many dioceses have now commissioned or published reports on how their ministers deal with allegations of abuse and on the extent of sexualized violence in their parishes.
Source: Stern
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