A report published this week by the Attorney General of the State of Maryland brought to light the history of clerical sex abuse in America’s primatial see, the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It includes the usual abundant cases of abuse, long list of abusive priests, and failures of archbishops to protect their flock from these wolves. These disclosures will not have come as a surprise to anyone. When children, priests, and archbishops have been combined, the result has been almost everywhere the same. 

The Attorney General’s report contains the usual appalling figures: over a period of 60+ years, 156 abusers ruined the lives of at least 600 children. But do these figures even come close to the extent of the sexual abuse of children and administrative abuse by the Archdiocese and Curia? They are based on the victims who have come forward, and any reliable accounting would have to include victims who could not come forward. And in how many cases has ecclesiastical coverup succeeded in concealing the perpetrators of abuse. 

Could anyone come up with formulae like the following? for every ten identified victims there are another ten unidentified victims, and for every ten identified abusers there are another five unidentified abusers. Until we begin to include estimates like these, we will be unable to assess the extent of clerical sexual abuse and its clerical coverup.