Church paid $436m to 800 victims for abuse in 2008.

Ballpoint pen drawing (detail) for digital art work titled Bully Posted Wednesday 19 January.

The Number of new claims of sexual abuse against US Roman Catholic priests rose by 16% to more than 800 last year, a Church report says. It says the Church paid $436m in 2008 for abuse cases. Most of the money was used to compensate victims. It found that one in five victims were under the age of 10 when they were abused.
The associated Press news agency said 2007 was an unusually high year, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles began paying a $660m settlement to about 500 people (it's cost the church $2bn).

I wish to remind readers of the Pope's comments in speaking to the US bishops at a national shrine in Washington in 2008. He vowed to work against a recurrence, saying "we will absolutely exclude paedophiles from the sacred ministry", At the time he asked the question "what does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today." Does this mean that his very own paedophile priests watched too much pornography before committing these crimes - maybe if pornography was made available to his celibate priests they would not have committed these heinous crimes, and the church could have donated the $2bn to poverty alleviation in Africa. Their celibacy (commitment to God and his Church) is suppose to provide a sanctuary for small children and young boys; instead they are abused and sodomised by gods people, in gods church and not by some violent rapist that has watched to much porn and violence on TV in the privacy of their own home.