A sweeping, year-long study of sex abuse by priests and others within the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland published Tuesday has turned up more than 1,000 cases since the mid-20th century.
The report, commissioned by the Swiss Conference of Bishops, and led by two University of Zurich historians, offers a rare and deep look at sexual abuse and harassment that has confounded the Catholic Church across the globe in recent decades — upending the lives of many victims and their families, and tarnishing the image of the institution.
The authors said in a statement that they identified 1,002 “situations of sexual abuse,” including accusations against 510 people. The abuse, they wrote, affected 921 people.
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“The situations identified surely amount to only the tip of the iceberg,” said the historians, Monika Dommann and Marietta Meier in a statement.
Among other findings, which were admittedly not exhaustive, over half — 56 per cent — of the cases of sexual abuse involved men or boys. Some 39 per cent of victims were women or girls, while sourcing did not allow for the remaining 5 per cent to be identified by gender, according to the study.
The researchers poured over thousands of pages of secret documents, assembled by church authorities since the mid-20th century. But, they said, many sources of information haven’t been fully studied. They cited some cases where documents were destroyed to cover up any alleged wrongdoing.
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With few exceptions, those accused of wrongdoing were all male. Nearly three-fourths of the documents examined showed the sexual abuse involved minors.
