Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis Deepens As Authorities Lag In Response
History, legal issues and doctrine all contribute to the continuing failure of Catholic authorities to recognize and respond more effectively to sexual abuse scandals.
A two-year grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania resulted in what the state's attorney general, Josh Shapiro, called "the largest, most comprehensive report into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church ever produced in the United States."
But the report, released Tuesday, was not the first. In 2002, revealed that Catholic authorities in the Boston Archdiocese had engaged in a massive cover-up of sex crimes committed by area priests, and investigations in other parts of the country have since uncovered similar patterns of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy. The ongoing scandals amount to
