Archdiocese of New York names 120 clergy ‘credibly accused’ of abuse

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The Archdiocese of New York has released a list Friday containing the names of 120 bishops, priests and deacons who have been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing a minor, possessing child porn or were at the center of compensation claim cases.
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Heartbreaking but with what else has come to light, not surprising.

Many of these objectively disordered men have taken up residence within the Catholic priesthood on all levels.

Good bishops have warned us of this.

Keep praying, implore our Lord Jesus at Adoration and Mass to clean up the mess.

The official teachings, despite all of this remain untarnished.

Thanks for posting this necessary information.

God bless.

Cathoholic
 
AlNg said:
120 clergy in one archdiocese seems like a lot to me.
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While even one name would have been undesirable, theArchdiocese website makes clear that the list includes priests ordained between 1908 and 2002, nearly 100 years. According to the Archdiocese, no clergy ordained since 2002 have been the subject of a credible allegation of abuse.

The New York Archdiocese is huge and many thousands of priests, probably well into the ten thousands, served there between 1908 and 2002. 120 is likely a very small single-digit percentage of the total.
 
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On the other hand, I’ve yet to have a parish with an accused priest while I was there. I also can’t help but feel that there were certain parishes who got more than their share because these guys kind of banded together. One parish I was not in that was in the next town over seemed to have like 3 or 4 in a row while our parish had zero. (This was in a diocese that already released all its names a while back.)

I am waiting for my hometown diocese bishop where I grew up to release the full list so I can see if any I used to know were on the list, but I kind of doubt it, because there were abusers at two other parishes in the area and their stories came out many years ago; both died some time after being accused.
 
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I realized I might have given out too much info. I deleted my post. 😦
 
I can tell you which priests my parish always got when i was growing up: all the ones who were physically ill. We got like 3 or 4 sick priests in a row. I suspect there was some reason our parish was considered an easy or cushy assignment or maybe it was because it was close to a hospital then (hospital has since closed).
 
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Data from the list shows the majority of the [alleged sexual abuse]claims happened between the 1970s and early 1990s. The (Sexual Abuse Crisis | Archdiocese of New York) doesn’t name the locations where the clergy worked, but says around half of them were ordained in the 1950s and 1960s – and the majority are now deceased.
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So half, that’s 60, were ordained in the 1950’s and 60’s and the majority are now deceased.

That leaves 60 between the 1970’s and 1990’s.

Out of a population of total priest in New York, what is the percentage of priests who were accused, not convicted, but accused ?

The media is hyping this and as we’re all seeing even in our own time today, the secular cases of teachers, coaches and others sexually abusing minors, is dwarfing what took place in the Catholic Church.

Don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not justifying any of it, but the broad brushed attack on the Catholic Church is unjustified and I see the Church trying to respond with overreaction.

Jim
 
What’s the point of publishing a list of “credibly accused” going back to 1908? What does “credibly accused” mean? Was there due process? Were they found guilty? Does the AMA publish a list of physicians credibly accused of malpractice going back 94 years? Or any other organization? This seems pointless.
 
JimG said:
What does “credibly accused” mean?
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I find it a very dangerous phrase. We live in a country where the standard is innocent until proven guilty. While I’m not dismissing the validity of the accusations, it seems that people are willing to convict (not in a legal sense but a practical sense) priests who have no means to defend themselves.
 
Is the rate of abuse that much higher in other organizations? While I don’t disagree that the media hypes things , because headlines sell newspapers, as the old saying goes. But while child abuse is a horrific thing, what people never talk about is that most child abuse of any kind is, sadly, by family members and close family friends.

I’m not defending the church’s actions, but sadly it’s how most organizations responded to abuse allegations for a very long time. Whether it’s the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts or your local school board, reputation has so often put ahead of justice. The Church has certainly taken more positive steps than some other churches. I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, and I remember my coreligionists condemning the Church, and now the extent of abuse among JW elders is being revealed, I sometimes wish I could go to some of those people making the most egregious claims and mention something about those living in glass houses.
 
JimG said:
What’s the point of publishing a list of “credibly accused” going back to 1908? What does “credibly accused” mean? Was there due process? Were they found guilty? Does the AMA publish a list of physicians credibly accused of malpractice going back 94 years? Or any other organization? This seems pointless.
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The main reason for doing it is so that it’s out in the open and the newspapers and prosecutors cannot be rummaging around for dirt and saying that the diocese is covering up.

In the vast majority of these cases there was no due process and the priest was not “found guilty” or “found liable” or any of that. If he had, there would be court records, a paper trail, and the priest would likely already have his name up on the Bishop Accountability website.

I can see why dioceses would not want to do this because in the case of priests who are already dead, they can’t defend themselves; in the case of priests who are alive but were never charged due to lack of evidence or whatever, it implies guilt or liability on a person who according to law has not been found guilty or liable; it raises questions about why the Church was “covering up” these names all these years; and it is likely to upset some of the faithful who find out for the first time that there was a cloud over their favorite esteemed priest. But in the end, if the diocese doesn’t release these names, then some newspaper or prosecutor will, so better for the diocese to just do it, especially if most of these guys are now dead or in the nursing home getting ready to check out.
 
niceatheist said:
Whether it’s the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts or your local school board, reputation has so often put ahead of justice.
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There has also always been a special concern in the Catholic Church for handling its own discipline of clergy rather than letting law enforcement do it. This goes back to the times when priests were persecuted for political reasons. Someone posted the video of excommunication from “Becket” movie yesterday. If you notice, the nobleman mentioned is being excommunicated because he and his men laid hands on a “holy priest” and killed him. The priest in question had been accused of sexual indiscretions with a young girl. The Church strongly objected, historically, to any civil punishment of its priests. If a priest was doing wrong, then his superiors in the Church were supposed to take care of punishing him if he needed punishment.

In recent years, I think the Church in USA has finally realized that you need to just let law enforcement step in and handle it when a priest is credibly accused of abusing children or embezzling money from his parish or other jurisdiction (which has also happened a lot - apparently there’s a large temptation in having 100 grand available and some priests just help themselves, also sometimes they are feeding addictions or giving money to people they have a sexual/ romantic relationship with) .
 
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All valid, but we must also keep in mind that until relatively recently, law enforcement was rarely interested in these cases. And families would have rarely wanted a Bishop to turn the information of their abused child was turned over the police.

Things have changed a lot in our society in the last 20 years with regards to this issue.
 
tafan2 said:
we must also keep in mind that until relatively recently, law enforcement was rarely interested in these cases.
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Yeah, I’m sure some of the victims would claim that was because of Church influence or pressure or whatever. The reality was just as you said. Unless it was some stranger abducting and murdering kids, law enforcement and prosecutors generally didn’t believe victims of sex abuse and/ or didn’t want to deal with such cases. That didn’t change till about the 80s.
 
It was later than that. In 2002, when this scandal was in full force and bishops were meeting in Dallas, reporting abuse to law enforcement wasn’t that big of an issue, not even in the media. The Kos case in Dallas wasn’t brought to a criminal trial in the late 90s until after the civil suit and prosecutors saw it would be popular. They had plenty of evidence before that.

Now parents would say it was due to pressure from Bishops. At the time, they didn’t want their child involved in a public scandal.
A coach from a neighboring town to my hometown got a 15 year old girl pregnant. It cost him his career, never any criminal action.
The only child abuse prosecuted in the past was the unfortunate 18 year old who got his underage girlfriend pregnant and was charged with statuatory rape. That was it.
 
Some of these men were laicizized.

That means the Church saw fit to remove their faculties.
 
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