Compared to the annual average in the last five years, the result of new church-run compensation programs for survivors as well as victims triggered to come out by numerous major clerical abuse scandals especially to minors by the Catholic clergy quadrupled in 2019.
The annual audit of around 200 dioceses and churches in the United States has been practiced since 2002 when the complaints about clergy coverups and abuses started to pile up and reforms approved by US bishops, it also includes an annual review of compliance.
The reform package is also popular in the name of the "Charter."
US Conference of Catholic Bishops released a report on Thursday that includes a 2019 report with coverage from July of 2018 until June 2019 wherein 4,434 allegations of clergy sex abuses were reported and it is all minors, The Hill reported.
The abuses each year did not pass the 1500-mark as it is only 903 in 2015, 1,318 in 2016, 693 cases only in 2017, and 1,451 in 2018.
Out of the 4,434 allegations that are recorded in the annual report, more than half of the reports were deemed credible based on the church.
Out of the 4,434 allegations, 37 complaints came from minors during the time period and it is covered in the report, wherein eight of which were deemed substantiated by church-run bodies based on the report.
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According to The Washington Post, in previous years, it is the average for substantiated claims. Across the United States, there are 37,000 diocesan and religious order priests.
The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate which is church-affiliated research on the Catholic Church further analyzed the complaints that were deemed credible by the church.
The CARA found that within those determined time frame, 57 percent of allegations that were credible that entered in 2019 happened before 1975, while 41 percent of which occurred between 1975 to 1999 and 2 percent happened since 2000 according to the report.
Officials of the church shared that despite the fact that there are still claims of recent abuse, the small number shows that their reforms are working and they assured that the older claims will be taken seriously.
Chairman of the National Review Board, Francesco C. Cesareo, a committee that is created by the Catholic Chuch in 2002 that oversees that proper implementation of the Charter shared that there is no real uptick since the establishment of the Charter based on the reports.
Cesario also added that data is available in public to show that the Church has been the one institution that has really taken an institutional approach and put in place protocols and policies that have resulted in a much safer environment within the Church.
A clergy-abuse survivors organization namely SNAP disclosed that based on the finding of the report, 863 allegations were tagged as unknown, and 956 are ongoing.
SNAP also added that church officials pretend that they are reporting on problems in the past but in fact, it is still an ongoing abuse and proven and admitted by clerics who have committed the crimes.
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