Victims of Catholic nuns rely on each other after being overlooked in the clergy sex abuse crisis

Gabrielle Longhi

By TIFFANY STANLEY

On Wednesdays, the support group meets over Zoom. The members talk about their lives, their religious families and their old parochial schools. But mostly, they are there to talk about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Catholic nuns.

The topic deserves more attention, they say. The sexual abuse of children by Catholic sisters and nuns has been overshadowed by far more common reports of male clergy abuse. Women in religious orders have also been abuse victims — but they have been perpetrators too.

“We’ve heard so much about priests who abuse and so little about nuns who abuse that it’s time to restore the balance,” said the group’s founder, Mary Dispenza, herself a former nun, in a speech to abuse survivors last year.

Dispenza, who endured abuse from both a childhood priest and a nun in her former order, started the online support group five years ago with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. More victims had been contacting her in the wake of #MeToo, as they reassessed past sexual abuse. She has since seen a growing awareness of abusive nuns at former Catholic orphanages and Native American boarding schools.

“The general public would rather not consider the fact that religious women rape, molest and torture children,” Dispenza told The Associated Press. Women are seen as nurturers and caregivers, an assumption only heightened with the “spiritual halo” of religious women.

“It’s something most of us don’t want to entertain or really believe,” she said.

NEW LAW OFFERS CHANCE FOR JUSTICE

Before she found the support group and its 10 or so members, Gabrielle Longhi had spent years looking for someone with a story like hers, once posting in the comments of SNAP’s website: “I never hear about abuse by nuns.”

Now 66 and living in Los Angeles, Longhi was a sophomore at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland, when she alleges a teacher, who was then a Catholic sister with the Society of the Sacred Heart, sexually abused her in an office.

Unlike most child sexual abuse victims, she spoke up right away. She told other teachers, her sister and friends that Sister Margaret Daley had tried to sexually force herself on Longhi. Neither her parents nor the police were notified.

“She also kind of retreated after that. She became more closed down,” said her sister, Carol O’Leary, who was then a student at Stone Ridge’s middle school. The sisters say they were soon asked to leave Stone Ridge.

Longhi always wondered if there were other victims. Daley, her alleged abuser, left the order in 1980 and died in 2015.

Last year, Longhi learned from another support group member that Maryland was removing its civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims. After the new law went into effect, Longhi sued her former school and the religious order.

Stone Ridge, which has educated Kennedys and the daughters of other Washington luminaries, sent a letter to its community about the allegations last fall. The school declined to comment further on active litigation.

The Society of the Sacred Heart declined to discuss the allegations, but issued a statement saying the order and its schools have implemented robust child protection policies. “We are deeply saddened,” the statement read. “Our prayers go out to all involved in this matter, and to all survivors of sexual abuse.”

An anticipated constitutional challenge to Maryland’s law is pending, but the policy change “makes all the difference in the world,” Longhi said. “Before you have no case and now you do.”

‘IT WAS ABUSE. I INTERPRETED IT AS LOVE.’

Paige Eppenstein Anderson is still hoping for her day in court. Like many group members, it took her decades to see that what happened to her was abuse, and once she did in 2020 at age 40, the statute of limitations had run out on her claim in her home state of Pennsylvania.

“It was abuse. I interpreted it as love,” she said of the sexual relationship she had as a student with a Catholic school teacher, who later joined a religious order.

As a teenager, she spent much of her free time with her teacher. Their bond was so noticeable that a yearbook entry from a friend called her the woman’s “companion.”

“It was very confusing to me,” Eppenstein Anderson said.

Anne Gleeson was also nearly 40 and in therapy before she understood that she was sexually abused for years, starting at age 13, by a nun who was 24 years her senior. She received a settlement from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 2004.

“The nun brainwashed me into thinking we were head over heels in love,” she said. “God’s love, that’s why no one else could know about it — it was so special.”

A longtime SNAP activist in St. Louis, Gleeson had felt that the advocacy group’s name — which only mentioned those abused by priests — neglected victims like her.

The nun abuse group brought “a great sense of relief,” she said.

LITTLE TRACKING OF ABUSIVE NUNS

Few dioceses or religious orders publicly list abusive nuns — a fact group members want to change. The advocacy group Bishop Accountability lists 172 Catholic sisters who have been accused of sex abuse.

“I feel that it’s vastly underreported,” said Marya Dantzer, a group member who settled her nun abuse case in Michigan in 1996.

Dantzer noted that nuns, especially as teachers, arguably spend more time with young people than priests.

For years, Dispenza and others have been asking without success for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — which represents two-thirds of U.S. Catholic sisters — to allow nun abuse survivors to speak at their annual meeting.

“We agree with SNAP that women religious need to keep working for the healing of victims and the prevention of further abuse and that hearing directly from survivors is essential,” said Sister Annmarie Sanders, LCWR spokesperson, in an email.

Sanders said the LCWR meeting was not “the proper venue for discussion on this issue.” Victims should instead contact their abuser’s religious order.

Each of the more than 400 U.S. religious institutes for women is relatively autonomous.

In a 2019 speech about Catholic sex abuse, LCWR’s then-president Sharlet Wagner acknowledged “that in some instances, our own sisters have been perpetrators of the abuse.”

That speech followed an apology for abuse from an international organization of Catholic sisters, as well as Pope Francis’ creation of an abuse reporting system, which includes nuns.

The support group members would like the church to accept more responsibility, and for all religious orders to expel known abusers from their ranks.

In the meantime, the support group continues to welcome new members, even as others move on. It remains mostly women, many over age 60.

Dispenza recently stepped back from facilitating the group, with Dantzer taking over as leader.

After seeing a growing need, Dispenza opened a second group in 2022 that includes international victims of nun abuse, and she will focus her efforts there.

Members of the international cohort are contemplating the launch of nun abuse support groups in Peru and the Balkans. They have put their contact information on the SNAP website, there for anyone looking for stories like their own.

Complete Article HERE!

‘It Erases Us’

— Sex Abuse Survivors Troubled By Washington Bill

By Hannah Albarazi

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to sign into law a bill that eliminates time limits for bringing child sex abuse claims in the future, but survivors say they are disappointed by an amendment stripping the bill’s retroactivity, saying the legislation doesn’t go far enough to hold abusers accountable.

The bill’s own author says it no longer expands access to justice for past abuses — only future ones. Fearing that the state itself could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in liability stemming from decades of negligent supervision, the Legislature struck language from the bill that would have allowed survivors of childhood sexual abuse to bring civil claims against individuals and institutions regardless of when the abuse occurred.

The overhauled bill doesn’t sit well for Seattle attorney Tim Law, who advocates for clergy abuse survivors around the world. The proposed legislation, H.B. 1618, “heavily favors institutions” and is “grossly unfair to survivors,” he told Law360 in an interview.

“There should be a window of opportunity for survivors to make their case, and without that it’s just a total giveaway,” said Law, who co-founded the nonprofit Ending Clergy Abuse.

But the Democrat-controlled state Legislature’s decision to not reopen a lookback window for survivors to bring timed-out claims came amid concerns that it could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars and an opposition campaign by well-heeled tort reformers.

While at least 27 U.S. states have created temporary or permanent revival windows to allow survivors of child sex abuse to bring otherwise time-barred civil claims, the Washington Legislature has exhibited strong resistance to passing a bill that would allow survivors to bring claims related to past abuse.

No Looking Back

Currently, Washington’s civil statute of limitations on recovering damages from childhood sexual abuse begins tolling once the victim turns 18. The survivor then has three years from the abuse, or three years from when they discovered or reasonably should have discovered an injury caused by the abuse.

As statehouses across the U.S. pass laws allowing previously timed-out child sex abuse claims, State Rep. Darya Farivar, a Democrat, saw a need to bring Washington’s law up to date.

Farivar first introduced H.B. 1618 last year, but it stalled out in the state Senate. After being reintroduced in January, the House overwhelmingly adopted an amendment proposed by State Rep. Peter Abbarno, a Republican, that stripped the bill of its retroactivity. In its amended form, H.B. 1618 will only eliminate the statute of limitations for civil child sex abuse claims going forward.

In comments on the House floor, Abbarno said the amendment “substantively leaves the bill the same.”

Abbarno said the decision to amend the bill stemmed from the fiscal note provided by the state attorney general’s office, which estimated that it could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to defend its Department of Children, Youth and Families — which manages the state’s foster care system — against previously time-barred claims resulting from negligent supervision. He added that making the bill prospective-only would meet both policy and fiscal needs.

But speaking on the House floor in January, Farivar said the amendment means this bill is “not going to be able to expand access to justice for current survivors.” Nonetheless, on Jan. 25 she joined her House colleagues in unanimously passing the amended bill.

Survivors Speak Out

While some survivors of childhood sexual abuse offered their support for the bill during a public hearing held by the Washington Senate’s Ways and Means Committee on Feb. 22, many expressed disappointment with the bill being neither retroactive nor containing a lookback window for survivors to bring civil claims.

It’s not hard to find states that have reformed their statutes of limitations regarding child sexual abuse claims.

Civil statutes of limitations for some or all child sex abuse claims have been eliminated in more than a third of all U.S. states, and more than half of all states have passed some form of lookback window to allow survivors of childhood sexual abuse to bring civil claims that would otherwise be time-barred, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Child USA.

Washington resident Christene Hansen told the Senate Ways and Means Committee that her life was derailed at the age of 13 when a teacher began abusing her. She said that while she believes the bill “will inspire change in the establishments that are in place to safeguard our children,” she hoped the law would be applied retroactively.

The Washington State Association for Justice likewise urged the committee to pass the amended legislation, as did the Sexual Violence Law Firm.

But other advocates spoke out in opposition to the bill, saying its lack of retroactivity means those responsible for past abuses won’t be held to account and urged the Legislature to pass a bill that increases past and future survivors’ access to justice.

Sarah Pearson, a survivor of sexual assault and an advocate for survivors, told the Senate Ways and Means Committee in late February that she can’t support the bill as amended, saying that children deserve justice regardless of whether the abuse occurs before or after the bill takes effect.

The bill also lost support from Peter Isely, a survivor of childhood sexual assault and founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests who testified that the bill “must be changed and made retroactive.”

“It erases us,” testified Isely.

Michael Polenberg, vice president of government affairs at the victims’ services group Safe Horizon, pushed for the passage of New York’s Child Victims Act and Adult Survivors Act, both of which created lookback windows for survivors.

Polenberg told Law360 that while any effort to reform or eliminate the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse is a step in the right direction, he stressed that “bills should allow survivors who are outside of the current statute of limitations to seek justice as well.”

“This is why the Child Victims Act in New York was so impactful. The lookback window allowed over 10,000 lawsuits to be filed on behalf of previously time-barred survivors of childhood sexual abuse,” Polenberg said. “Similar measures to seek relief in court should be put in place for individuals who were sexually abused as adults.”

On Feb. 29, the Senate unanimously voted to pass the amended bill.

“Tip of the Iceberg”

In an interview with Law360 in late February, Farivar said it “was a deeply painful decision” to amend the bill to prospective-only, but she saw it as the only way to get support for the bill in the Legislature.

If the fiscal note is correct and the state would truly face such a steep mountain of liability under a retroactive bill, that is “egregious,” Farivar said.

But even without retroactivity, Farivar says her bill is “a really bold statement that we take recovery seriously, we know it’s not linear, we know that folks need time to come forward.”

“By giving folks that time to come forward and pursue justice on their terms, we’re going to be able to identify folks who are predators and folks who are protecting predators,” Farivar said. “That, in the long run, is going to fundamentally change what the landscape of abuse looks like in Washington and what justice survivors have access to.”

Farivar said H.B. 1618 “is really just the tip of the iceberg,” and that she’s continued to speak with advocates and survivors about how to push for legislation that allows for retroactivity or a lookback window.

“We’re not done,” she said, adding that she believes it’s important for institutions — including the government — to take responsibility for abuse that occurs on their watch.

Abbarno and the chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, State Sen. June Robinson, a Democrat, did not make themselves available for an interview with Law360.

Opposition to Lookbacks

Survivors’ desire to bring previously time-barred claims is at odds with the goals of the American Tort Reform Association, which voiced opposition to the original version of the bill.

Cary Silverman of Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP, speaking on behalf of ATRA, told Law360 in late February that “ATRA’s position is that every civil action should be subject to a finite statute of limitations, which is a key part of a properly functioning civil justice system in which courts can evaluate liability when records and witnesses are available.”

ATRA has been among the most outspoken opponents of efforts to end statutes of limitations on child sex abuse, voicing opposition in legislatures from Maine to Nevada. At least one of the states, North Dakota, has backed away from opening up a lookback window for sex abuse claims.

Silverman said ATRA “is particularly concerned with legislative proposals that retroactively revive any type of time-barred claim.”

“These proposals are especially problematic because businesses cannot go back in time to retain records already discarded, purchase more insurance, or decide not to enter an area with such an extreme liability risk,” he added.

However, Silverman said ATRA has not taken a position on Washington’s H.B. 1618 as it’s been amended.

H.B. 1618 now awaits Inslee’s signature. A spokesperson for the governor did not respond to Law360’s request for comment on the opposition voiced by survivors to the amended bill, and declined to speculate as to if or when the governor might sign the bill.

But survivors and their advocates say holding perpetrators and institutions responsible for past abuse is key to obtaining justice, and warned that rushing a bill into law that lets past abusers off the hook will only make it more difficult to pass stronger bills in the future.

“Once it passes, trying to get momentum next year to get a window becomes harder,” Law, the Seattle attorney and advocate for clergy sex abuse survivors, told Law360.

For survivors, he added, the law “sounds good, but it has no practical effect.”

Complete Article HERE!

Vatican investigating historic child sex abuse claims against New Zealand Cardinal John Dew

Cardinal John Dew

By Michael Morrah

Newshub can reveal the Vatican is investigating New Zealand’s highest ranked Catholic over child sex allegations.

Cardinal John Dew, who delivered the church’s public apology to victims of clergy abuse at the Abuse in Care Royal Commission in 2021, is alleged to have sexually abused a boy who attended St Joseph’s Orphanage in Upper Hutt in 1977.

Wellington police spent months investigating, but recently closed the file and have not pressed charges saying they were unable to locate enough evidence.

Newshub has learned a church investigation, overseen by the Vatican, is now underway.

54-year-old Steve Carvell alleges Cardinal Dew sexually abused him when he was seven years old.

Cardinal Dew says it’s a “false allegation” and took Newshub all the way to the Supreme Court to prevent the reporting of the allegation. The court has allowed us to tell the story.

“That’s a shocking allegation and it did not happen” Dew told Newshub.

“I do not know Steven Carvell,” he said.

Carvell told Newshub he was 100 percent sure Dew abused him.

“The abuse still continues today because those memories and those obscene occasions, those things in life that I never, ever want to feel, I still today feel those intense feelings,” he said.

Steve Carvell has taken the step of asking a district court judge to waive his automatic right to name suppression so Newshub can tell his story.

Carvell also alleges that he was raped by the late Father Noel Donoghue, another priest who was at the Upper Hutt parish in 1977, and that he was sexually assaulted by a nun who visited the orphanage.

He took his complaint to police, the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care and the Catholic Church’s National Office of Professional Standards (NOPS).

Cardinal Dew, who retired as the leader of the Catholic church in New Zealand in May last year, cooperated with the police investigation.

He was interviewed for more than an hour by a detective at Lower Hutt Police station in December.

Speaking to Newshub, Dew said he was “absolutely certain” what Carvell has alleged did not happen

“I can honestly say with every ounce of my being that I have never abused anyone in my life. Ever.

“I would hope that people would believe someone who’s now had 48 years of experiences as a priest and has never had an allegation made against me,” said Dew.

“This has come totally out of the blue 46, 47 years later and I’m telling my truth.”

Police spoke to other people who were at the orphanage at the time but told Newshub they have exhausted all available lines of enquiry.

“Police were unable to locate sufficient evidence to meet the evidential test – which requires sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction.

“As such the case has now been closed, however Police will always consider new information that may come to light in relation to an investigation,” they said in a statement.

Dew’s successor as Archbishop of Wellington, Paul Martin, said the Cardinal “has not been involved in public ministry since he became aware of the complaint.”

This is standard practice while allegations against priests are investigated.

Steve Carvell’s story

Steve Carvell is deeply affected by memories of alleged sexual abuse which have surfaced in recent years.

“The reason I’ve decided to share my story and come forward today is in the hope that other victims out there draw some strength from what I’m doing.”

He claimed the sexual abuse happened during a stay at St Joseph’s Orphanage in Upper Hutt when he was a little boy.

His admission records confirm he was there for 12 days – from the 1st to the 12th of November 1977.

“I saw that I was seven years old and it was at that point in time that I really broke down. I thought I might have been a bit older than that,” said Steve.

“It was the saddest moment of my life.”

Carvell said on his first night at the orphanage, he was woken by then ‘Father’ John Dew.

“He said: you’ve been a naughty boy, you’ve woken everybody up in the room. But I’m going to let you off. How would you like to play a game of catch me if you can,'”

Carvell claims the game swiftly became sexual in nature.

“Things got a bit weird, so instead of tagging it became touching.”

Carvell’s complaint alleges it was not only Father Dew involved in the game, but also a nun he says spent time at the orphanage. A nun he says he liked and trusted.

Clergy directory records cited by Newshub confirm that Dew was one of four priests at the Upper Hutt diocese in 1977

He rose through the church ranks over the following decades and in 2015 Pope Francis made him a Cardinal

As the head of the church here, Dew went before the Royal Commission in 2021 to make a public apology to victims abused by Catholic clergymen.

“I apologise to you on behalf of the bishops and congregational leaders of the Catholic church,” he said at the time.

“We offer no excuses for their actions, or for ours, that have caused you harm.”

Dew told Newshub that his apology still stands, despite the allegations that have been made against him.

“Absolutely, I stand by every word I said and that apology. Every word I said.”

“I couldn’t have stood up at the Royal Commission and said all the things that I had if this was part of my background. I couldn’t have stood up if I was covering things up”, said Dew

Carvell alleged Father Noel Donoghue – another priest at St Joseph’s at the time – also harmed him.

Again, his memories are that the abuse occurred during a game of tag in the middle of the night.

When Donoghue couldn’t catch Carvell, the priest became angry and Steve alleges he was raped.

“It was the most painful thing that I’ve ever felt in my life.”

When asked if he understood what was going on at the time, given his age, Carvell said he just knew his parents didn’t hurt him like that.

He said he felt isolated and tormented and that Father John Dew made him feel what happened was his fault, telling him he’d been “naughty”.

“So, it was a feeling of just begging for help from an adult and it never came.”

Dew doubts the allegations against Donoghue are true.

“I find that very hard to believe. Very hard to believe,” he said.

When asked by Newshub’s Michael Morrah why he believed that he said “oh, just unexpected of a person, the person, that I came to know.”

What Carvell said he endured and witnessed hadn’t always been clear in his mind.

His flashbacks started in 2019. The memories have become increasingly detailed and, at times, overwhelming.

“That tends to be interestingly enough the primary way these memories come back. They tend to come back initially as fragments,” said Professor Martin Dorahy, a clinical psychologist at Canterbury University.

“And then over time these tend to be pieced together and then remembered.”

Steve Carvell has suffered from complex Post-traumatic stress disorder for many years – which he attributes to the trauma of the alleged abuse.

Prof Dorahy says it’s uncommon for people to fabricate memories of sexual abuse, but they may misremember certain details.

“The majority of cases, it would seem, appear to reflect something that is more accurate, rather than something that is made up in a wholesale fashion.”

In his legal bid to stop Newshub reporting the allegations, Dew’s lawyer attacked Carvell’s credibility saying “the source of the allegations, one person’s memories of events some 46 years ago, is not reliable.”

Dew also said he had no idea why Carvell was making these claims

“I do not remember him. I do not remember any of the children from the orphanage, because we didn’t go to the orphanage.”

He has stood down from priestly duties while the police investigation took place and said that was very difficult.

“It meant two very good friends who died in that time, I had to tell their widows ‘I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to do this because an allegation has been made against me’,” he said.

Newshub has chosen not to name the nun accused as it was unable to independently verify her presence at the orphanage at the time.

The Sisters of Mercy – who ran the orphanage – refused Newshub’s request to access their records, but through their lawyers said Steve’s allegations were “demonstrably untrue”

In evidence provided to the court, Congregation Leader Sue France said the nun Carvell named was living and working full time in Palmerston North in the year the abuse was alleged to have occurred.

Further evidence provided on behalf of the Sisters of Mercy suggested it would have difficult for a nun to travel between Palmerston North and Upper Hutt.

One former nun also said in an affidavit that the abuse could not have occurred in the way Steve has described, without others hearing or being aware of it.

Noel Donoghue died in 2005.

Steve Carvell’s complaint was sent to the royal commission after the conclusion of its public hearings.

The commission told Newshub that accounts and experiences received would still inform its deliberations.

Now that the Police has closed its investigation, the Vatican is carrying out its own investigation into the allegations against Cardinal Dew.

The Vatican is expected to conclude its investigation later this year.

Where to find help and support:

Complete Article HERE!

Pope Francis orders investigation into sexual assault allegations against Archbishop Lacroix

Pope Francis has personally mandated retired Quebec Superior Court judge André Denis to conduct a preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual assault against the Archbishop of Quebec, Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix.

In a letter dated February 8 and signed by the hand of the Pope, including The duty obtained a copy, François asked former judge Denis to give him, at the end of his investigation, “a detailed report of your steps and your conclusions”.

This report will allow the pope to decide whether the allegations are sufficiently credible to justify the opening of a canonical trial. However, the alleged victim of Mgr Lacroix, whose identity is not known, refuses to participate in this process, indicated to Duty his lawyer Me Alain Arsenault.

The latter considers that the Vatican’s approach is not “credible”. The lawyer, who leads numerous class actions targeting religious orders and dioceses, reports that other victims have gone through this process and emerged “bruised and victims of reprisals”.

He asks that his client’s choice “not to call the police, not to contact the Pope, but to register for collective action” be respected.

Withdrawal

The name of Mgr Lacroix surfaced on January 25 in Superior Court when a new list of alleged attackers was filed as part of the class action brought against the diocese of Quebec.

The alleged victim, who was 17 years old at the time of the alleged acts (in 1987 and 1988), claims to have suffered touching, fellatio and penetration. These allegations have not yet been proven in court.

In a short press release released Monday, the diocese of Quebec offered “its full collaboration” to former judge Denis, “but will not intervene in the progress of the investigation nor in its conclusions.” The diocese added that it will make “no further comment on this approach”.

On January 26, the day after the allegations were made public, Bishop Lacroix announced that he was temporarily withdrawing from his activities “until the situation is clarified.” The cardinal also “categorically” denied having committed the actions with which he is accused, describing them as “unfounded”.

A few days later, in a video broadcast to his diocesans, Mgr Lacroix declared: “Never, to my knowledge, have I made any inappropriate gesture towards anyone, whether minors or adults. My soul and my conscience are at peace in the face of these accusations which I refute. »

Several mandates

Despite the victim’s refusal to participate in the process, retired judge André Denis intends to complete his investigation. In recent years, the former magistrate has been entrusted with other mandates linked to the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church.

Last June, he was mandated by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to lead an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse committed in Nunavut by Franco-Canadian priest Johannes Rivoire. He also led a statistical examination of the archives of the Archdiocese of Montreal (comprising the dioceses of Montreal, Joliette, Saint-Jean–Longueuil, Saint-Jérôme and Valleyfield) and the diocese of Mont-Laurier, which made it possible to determine that at least 87 priests perpetrated sexual abuse from 1940 to 2021.

Complete Article HERE!

Reckoning

— An NBC Bay Area investigation into a new wave of lawsuits accusing Catholic clergy of sexually abusing children

by Candice Nguyen, Michael Bott and Alex Bozovic

The Catholic church is once again being buried in child sex abuse accusations across California. More than 4,000 people are suing Catholic institutions across the state, enabled by a recent law that opened a window for survivors to sue their alleged abusers, no matter how far back their accusations go. Hundreds of Northern California priests are being accused for the first time, including some still working in churches and schools today. NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit dug through the new claims, which suggest the decades-long scandal could go far deeper than the public previously knew.

This page is the culmination of more than four years of reporting by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit. You’ll find profiles on abuse victims we’ve interviewed over the years, responses to the new allegations from local bishops, and links to the stories we’ve published along the way.


RESPONSE FROM THE CHURCH

Archdiocese of San Francisco:

Diocese of Oakland:

Diocese of Santa Rosa:

Diocese of San Jose:

THE ACCUSERS

More than 1,500 people have sued the Catholic church in Northern California since 2020. A similar flood of lawsuits hit the church two decades ago. We’ve interviewed more than a dozen alleged victims, some who came forward long ago, and others now speaking out for the very first time. Here are some of their stories.

Resources for victims and survivors

If a child is currently in danger, call 9-1-1 or Child Protective Services.

To report past abuse, call your local police department.

The California Attorney General’s Office is conducting an ongoing investigation into accusations of Catholic clergy abuse. Report to the California Attorney General’s Office: ClergyAbuse@doj.ca.gov.

Reach out to advocates with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (additional resources).