The Church has repeatedly been exposed as a den of sexual abuse worldwide. It has now come to light that the Church spends millions of dollars to buy the silence of victims of sexual abuse.

Settlements by Church in sexual abuse cases

The Church has used money and muscle power to settle and scuttle cases of sexual abuse against their priests. We list some cases where hush money was paid to victims of sexual abuse.

1) May 11: Rev Foster P Rogers sexually abused a 15-year-old victim in his car in July 1979. Rogers, who belongs to New York’s Catholic Church, arrived at a settlement by paying $100 million to the victim. Another settlement arrived at in May this year was by the Orleans Catholic Church which paid $1 million to the victim aged between 10 and 12 years. In this case, the victim was the child of a family friend of the accused Padre Wheeler. In exchange for not taking his case to trial, Wheeler agreed to serve five years of probation, avoid contact with the victim, and register as a sex offender for 15 years.

2) May 3: Tasmania’s Anglican Church arrived at a settlement with 16 victims of sexual abuse in May this year. A total of $6.5 million was paid as a settlement. It must be highlighted that one of the victims, aged 11 to 15 years, was abused by three Anglican padres and a teacher.

3) March 25: Rochester Roman Catholic Church paid $7.6 million in March this year. The Padres are accused of abusing 400 victims.

4) August 2022: On August 4, Harrisburg Roman Catholic Diocese paid a settlement amount of $12.7 million to the 111 victims who were sexually abused by the padres. The settlement was made under the diocese’s independent survivor compensation program.

5) July 2022: Two cases of the settlement were arrived at in July last year. On July 7, New York’s Roman Catholic Church paid a compensation of $1 million to 2 of Padre Mark Haight’s 400 victims. It is reported that despite knowing that Haight had abused many boys for decades, he was repeatedly relocated instead of being reported to the police.

On July 5, the Bishop’s Conference of Scotland paid 2.25 million pounds as a settlement to a boy who was abused in the 1970s when he attended a residential school in Scotland. The victim was 14 to 16 years old when the ‘spiritual’ director of the Scottish Seminary assaulted him 2 to 3 times a month in the dormitory bed.

6) September 2018: The Brooklyn Roman Catholic Church paid $27.5 million on 18 September 2018, for the sexual abuse by its religious teachers. Four victims were subjected to sexual assaults in Brooklyn between 2003 and 2009 during an after-school program when they were aged between 8 and 12 years.

7) May 2007: On 19 May 2007 the Youth Minister of the Long Island Roman Catholic Church paid a hush money of $11.45 million to victims who were repeatedly raped as teenagers in the 1990s. He had to pay $250,000 annually to a woman for 12 years and $115,000 to a man for the next 30 years who were his teen victims.

These cases are a mere drop in the ocean. However, they highlight how easy it is for the cash-rich Church to silence the victims of sexual abuse and rape. Because the padres get away without punishment they are emboldened to carry on with their crimes without fear. No wonder numerous cases of sexual abuse and rape by Padres and other Church officials are reported worldwide. There have been shocking incidents of sexual abuse by Christian padres in Bharat too.

Sexual Abuse in Churches

In February this year, an independent commission’s report said Portugal’s Catholic Church sexually abused more than 4800 minors. The commission, set up by the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, said that a minimum of 4815 children have been victims of sexual abuse over 70 years. The final report contains validated testimonies of sexual abuse from 1950 to 2022.

A Vatican insider estimated that up to a million Italian children had been abused over seven decades. We do not know the true number because the clergy enjoy various immunities in Italy and the nation has never confronted, let alone fully investigated, the evil that has taken place within its borders.

It is a well-established fact that sexual abuse of minors is rampant across churches in the world and the Catholic Church clergy, in particular, have been found guilty repeatedly by independent investigators. However, the Church uses its money power to silence the victims and allows the abusers to go scot-free.