In my reporting, I identified 52 official cases of Amish child sexual assault in seven states over the past two decades. Chillingly, this number doesn’t begin to capture the full picture. Virtually every Amish victim I spoke to—mostly women but also several men—told me they were dissuaded by their family or church leaders from reporting their abuse to police or had been conditioned not to seek outside help (as Sadie put it, she knew she’d just be “mocked or blamed”). Some victims said they were intimidated and threatened with excommunication. Their stories describe a widespread, decentralized cover-up of child sexual abuse by Amish clergy.
“We’re told that it’s not Christlike to report,” explains Esther*, an Amish woman who says she was abused by her brother and a neighbor boy at age 9. “It’s so ingrained. There are so many people who go to church and just endure.”
Once upon an earlier part of my own living lifetime, Catholic sex abuse was just a rumor, until it started getting reported on, and studied, and then finally, prosecuted.
The article in the OP is how this started with a different religious group;
United States[edit]
Main article: Catholic Church sex abuse cases in the United States
The United States has been the focus of many scandals and subsequent reforms.[62] BishopAccountability.org, an "online archive established by lay Catholics," have reported over 3,000 civil lawsuits against the church,[63] some of these cases have resulted in multimillion-dollar settlements with many claimants, totaling more than $3 billion in 2012.[57][63]
In 2004, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange settled nearly 90 cases for $100 million.[64] In July 2007, it's parent archdiocese, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles reached a settlement of 45 lawsuits for $60 million. By July 2007, [65][66] a $660 million agreement was made with more than 500 alleged victims, in December 2006, the archdiocese
In September 2007 the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego reached a $198.1 million "agreement with 144 childhood sexual abuse victims."[67]
In 1998 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas paid $30.9 million to twelve victims of one priest ($48.5 million in present-day terms).[68][69] From 2003 to 2009 nine other major settlements, involving over 375 cases with 1551 claimants/victims, resulted in payments of over US$1.1 billion.[note 2] The Associated Press estimated the settlements of sex abuse cases from 1950 to 2007 totaled more than $2 billion.[65] BishopAccountability puts the figure at Addressing "a flood of abuse claims" five dioceses (Tucson, Arizona; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Davenport, Iowa, and San Diego) got bankruptcy protection.[65] Eight Catholic dioceses have declared bankruptcy due to sex abuse cases from 2004 to 2011.[70]
Although bishops had been sending sexually abusive priests to facilities such as those operated by the Servants of the Paraclete since the 1950s, there was scant public discussion of the problem until the mid-1960s. Even then, most of the discussion was held amongst the Catholic hierarchy with little or no coverage in the media. A public discussion of sexual abuse of minors by priests took place at a meeting sponsored by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal held on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in 1967, to which all U.S. Catholic bishops were invited.[citation needed]
Various local and regional discussions of the problem were held by Catholic bishops in later years. However, it was not until the 1980s that discussion of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clerics began to be covered as a phenomenon in the news media of the United States. According to the Catholic News Service, public awareness of the sexual abuse of children in the United States and Canada emerged in the late 1970s and the 1980s as an outgrowth of the growing awareness of physical abuse of children in society.[citation needed]
In September 1983, the National Catholic Reporter published an article on the topic.[71] The subject gained wider national notoriety in October 1985 when Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe pleaded guilty to 11 counts of molestation of boys.[72] After the coverage of Gauthe's crimes subsided, the issue faded to the fringes of public attention until the mid-1990s, when the issue was again brought to national attention after a number of books on the topic were published.[73]
In 2002, the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priests drew the attention, first of the United States and ultimately the world, to the problem.[74][75][76] Other victims began to come forward with their own allegations of abuse, resulting in more lawsuits and criminal cases.[9] Since then, the problem of clerical abuse of minors has received significantly more attention from the Church hierarchy, law enforcement agencies, government and the news media. One study shows that the Boston Globe coverage of the cases "had a negative and long-lasting effect" on Catholic school enrollment, and explained "about two-thirds of the decline in Catholic schooling."[77]
In 2003 Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee authorized payments of as much as US$20,000 to sexually abusive priests to convince them to leave the priesthood.[78]
As recently as 2011 Fr Curtis Wehmeyer was allowed to work as a priest in Minnesota despite many people having reported concern about his sexual compulsion and suspicious behavior with boys. Wehmeyer was employed as a priest without proper background checks. Wehmeyer was later convicted of sexually abusing two boys. After Wehmeyer's arrest there were complaints the responsible clergy were more concerned with how to spin the story in a favorable light than in helping victims.[79]
In July 2018, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. resigned from the College of Cardinals (the first Cardinal to do so since 1927) following allegations of abuse and attempted homosexual rape at a seaside villa.[80][81] In August, a "systematic coverup" of sex abuse by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania parishes was revealed.[82][83] Reviewers of the situation indicated that many more victims and perpetrators were likely undiscovered.[83]
In March 2018, Archbishop Anthony Apuron of Guam was removed from office by the Vatican.[84] Apuron had been accused of sexually molesting altar boys in the late 1970s. Moreover, in the latest case, priest Louis Brouillard was charged for having raped altar boys during "sleepovers" as a teenager. Over fifteen priests, two archbishops, and a bishop have been recognized in sex abuse cases, from the 1950s until the 1990s.
Jay Report[edit]
In the United States the 2004 John Jay Report, commissioned from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and funded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), was based on volunteer surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The 2004 John Jay Report was based on a study of 10,667 allegations against 4,392 priests accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002.[85]
Withholding names of accused clergy[edit]
On December 29 2019, it was revealed that numerous Bishops across the United States withheld hundreds of names from their accused clergy list.[86][87][88]
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