• By Lawrence Buser
• Memphis Commercial Appeal
• Posted April 7, 2010 at midnight
• Please visit the source for the article.

A Brief Timeline of the Catholic Church’s priest sex abuse scandal

CHRONOLOGY

A brief timeline of the Catholic Church's priest sex-abuse scandal:

James Porter

John Geoghan

1985: In first abuse case to draw national attention, Father Gilbert Gauthe pleaded guilty to 11 cases of sexually abusing children in Lafayette, La., including altar boys and Boy Scouts. Served 10 years in prison.

1992: U.S. bishops meeting in South Bend, Ind., admit that some bishops tried to hide abuse.

1993: Rev. James Porter of Fall River, Mass., pleaded guilty to 41 counts of sexually abusing children in five states in 1960s and 1970s. Porter, who gave up his priesthood in 1974, was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison. He died in 2005 at age 70.

1998: Former Boston priest John Geoghan was defrocked amid allegations that he had been fondling boys for 30 years in a half dozen parishes. Geoghan was strangled in 2003 by another inmate in prison where he was serving a 10-year sentence.

2002: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” calling for zero tolerance of child sexual abuse by clergy.

2004: Bishops-sponsored study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York found 10,667 complaints of sexual abuse against 4,392 priests and deacons between 1950 and 2002.

2004: Catholic League reported child sexual abuse is more likely to be committed by family members and teachers, and is slightly more likely to be committed by Protestant clergy.

2005: Members of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) distributed leaflets at Sunday services at Church of the Ascension in Raleigh criticizing the Catholic Church’s handling of sex-abuse allegations. Three priests accused of sexual abuse — Richard Mickey, Paul St. Charles and Juan Carlos Duran — had been assigned to Ascension in past years.

2005: Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, 74, of Boston sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison for child rape in the 1980s.

2008: Pope Benedict XVI declared he is “deeply ashamed” of U.S. priest sex abuse scandal and says the church will “absolutely exclude” pedophiles from the priesthood. Two years later he receives criticism for his earlier handling of abuse cases as archbishop of Munich.

2009: Catholic Diocese of Memphis and Dominicans agree to pay $2 million to John Doe, a teen in 2000 whose claim of abuse by Father Juan Carlos Duran was deemed credible. Judge orders seal on case documents lifted.

2010: Some 300 former Catholic students in Germany say they are victims of physical or sexual abuse by priests; Brazilian authorities investigate claims that three priests sexually abused altar boys after a video of one case was shown on television; and in Ireland, government-ordered investigations document child abuse and cover-ups from the 1930s to 1990s involving more than 15,000 children.

-- Lawrence Buser

© 2010 Memphis Commercial Appeal. Please visit the source for the article.