Priest Abuse and Clergy Sexual Abuse Information

Shouldn’t these criminals be in jail, or some even on death row? Rape is second only to murder, and these guys are doing it to children! I can’t believe that this isn’t a bigger news story.

How many of these guys are paying for their crimes?

Surprisingly few, given that there are over 40,000 priests in the US and 400,000 in the world. Less than 1/2 of 1% have ever been charged with a crime, which is comparable to or less than clergy in other churches, much less than among teachers and coaches, and not even in the same league as abuse within families.

Here are the American cases that actually involved arrests:

Daniel McCormack, a self-confessed sexually abusive priest was sentenced to five years in prison for abusing five boys (8–12 years) in 2001.

Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul was charged with molesting two teenage girls at a Catholic church in Greenbush, Minnesota, a small rural town near the Canadian border.

Father James Porter was a Roman Catholic priest who was convicted of molesting 28 children. He admitted sexually abusing at least 100 of both sexes over a period of 30 years, starting in the 1960s.

Reverend Mr. James "Ron" Gonsalves, Wailuku, Hawaii, Gonsalves the administrator of Saint Ann Roman Catholic Church in Waihee, Maui, pleaded guilty on May 17, 2006 to several counts of sexual assault on a 12-year-old male.

A Wisconsin priest, the Rev. Lawrence C Murphy, who taught at the former St. John School for the Deaf in the Milwaukee suburb of St. Francis, Wisconsin from 1950 to 1974, allegedly molested more than 200 deaf boys.

In 1981, the former Rev. Stephen Kiesle was convicted for tying up and molesting two boys in a California church rectory.

In 2005, Rev. Francis Engels pleaded guilty to molesting a Peoria altar boy on trips to Milwaukee in the early 1980s.

On November 21, 2005, Monsignor Dale Fushek of the Diocese of Phoenix was arrested and charged with 10 criminal misdemeanor counts related to alleged inappropriate sexual contact with teens and young adults.

Typically, those who have been abused or imagine they’ve been abused sue the Catholic Church, which did not do the abusing, in hopes of raking in the big bucks from donations of Catholic people.

Cheers,
Bruce