“Grim” Data Reveals Extent of Child Sex Crimes Within the Australian Catholic Church

Trigger warning: This article discusses child sexual assault.

It has been revealed seven per cent of Australian Catholic Church priests, working between 1950 and 2009, have been accused of child sex crimes.

The worst offending institutions have been shown to be the orders of brothers, who often run schools and homes for vulnerable children, says the ABC.

It’s the most substantial dataset released so far, and studies were done in cooperation with the Australian Catholic Church as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Ten religious institutes and 75 church authorities were surveyed as part of the commission.

According to Counsel Gail Furness, a total of 4,444 alleged child sex abuse incidents were recorded in the survey, ninety per cent of which were boys, at the average age of 11-and-a-half years old, at the time of abuse. Girls were only 10-and-a-half years old on average when they were abused.

Over the 60-year period, seven per cent of priests who had ministered were accused of child sex offences. The dataset shows very little abuse seems to have happened since the 2000s, though Furness says to take that statistic with a grain of salt.

She explained the average time it takes between a victim being abused and reporting it, or seeking redress, is 33 years.

Where the data falls short—as the ABC suggests—is that it only shows cases where victims sought compensation, or where the church investigated and substantiated the claim.

It also leaves out details on the victims, and if they suffered abuse by multiple different church personnel. For a more thorough breakdown of the commission findings, you can find that here.

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