When the nation's Roman Catholic bishops meet today to decide how to deal with priests accused of sexually abusing children and teens, they'll start with a handicap. Nearly a year into the scandal, the bishops have yet to compile a detailed accounting of the problem they face. They have collected no national data on how many priests have been accused, how many are serial offenders, how many are still in the church, or even how many are dead.
But a USA TODAY analysis of all known cases from the nation's 10 largest dioceses -- the most detailed national study to date -- paints a picture that is in some ways at odds with public perceptions of the abuse scandal:
* Media coverage and public pressure galvanized bishops to action after years of ignoring or sheltering abusers. More priests have been removed or put on leave since the scandal erupted in January than in the previous 40 years combined. Still, even the dioceses USA TODAY surveyed have not released complete information about how many priests have been accused, and there could be hundreds more than the 234 cases since 1965 found by the USA TODAY study.
* Prosecutors also have been targeting priests accused of child abuse, even when the church has not. Of the accused priests, 24% either face criminal charges or already have been convicted of crimes. Some have served their time and are back in the community.
* Very few accused priests remain in positions in which they can easily use their authority to abuse minors. About a tenth have been pulled from the priesthood and returned to lay status. Most of the others in the USA TODAY survey, while still under the authority of the church, have been removed from their positions and are forbidden to dress as priests or serve in public ministry. About a third have been placed on administrative leave pending investigation.
* Most abusive priests are not serial predators, despite the publicity about a few accused of abusing many children. One in 10 accused priests account for more than half the known allegations, while 40% have been accused of abuse by one person. Of the 25,616 priests who have served in the 10 dioceses since 1965, slightly fewer than 1% have been named publicly in allegations.
The findings are drawn from a USA TODAY database compiled from church statements, media reports and court documents. The research identified 900 accused priests across the USA and analyzed data for the archdioceses of Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, New York and Philadelphia; and the dioceses of Brooklyn; Rockville Centre, Long Island; and Orange, Calif. These 10 dioceses are home to 31% of the nation's 65 million Catholics.
Church officials in nine of the 10 dioceses -- all except Boston -- verified names and status of the accused priests who have been removed.
The findings are consistent with other reports but reveal more detail. Most recently, an Associated Press report Sunday found that 325 priests had been taken out of ministry nationwide from their posts since the beginning of the year. SurvivorsFirst, a new victims advocacy group, has announced plans to release a public Internet database Tuesday of more than 600 accused priests compiled from newspaper articles.
''The bishops genuinely don't know how widespread the problem is, how serious it is and how many priests need to be dealt with,'' says Stephen Pope, chairman of the theology department at Boston College and an expert on the Catholic laity. Though such data isn't required to set policies, ''there has to be a connection between the two,'' he says.
The information is useful not only for bishops making policy but also for ordinary Catholics, says R. Scott Appleby, former director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at The University of Notre Dame.
''(Catholics') primary concern is the safety of their children,'' he says. ''But they want due process for priests, they want to avoid witch hunts, and they want to know just how widespread this is and how much dealing with it will clog up the real ministry of the church.''
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting this week in Washington, D.C., to revise the ''zero-tolerance'' abuse policy it wrote in Dallas in June. The policy requires that all known abusers be removed from ministry. The Vatican said it didn't include fair procedures for evaluating accusations and removing offenders.
The revisions worked out with the Vatican would establish church courts, known as tribunals, to hear cases.
Galvanized by the spotlight
The decision will cap a year of accelerated response to the scandal. Not only were half the priests in USA TODAY's analysis taken out of ministry this year, but one in five were not acted on until after the bishops approved the zero-tolerance policy in June.
Most of the nation's 194 dioceses, including the 10 studied, have not released complete data on the accusations that they have received. (There are a few exceptions. Baltimore, for instance, recently posted on the archdiocese Web site what it says is a complete list of the priests there who face allegations and have been removed.)
Though nine of the 10 dioceses contacted agreed to confirm the names and current religious status for the priests asked about by USA TODAY, none provided additional names. However, Philadelphia said it has received allegations about six other priests who were not on USA TODAY's list but declined to name them. This suggests that many more priests may have been accused in addition to the ones whose names have been publicly cited.
Criminal charges
USA TODAY found 23 priests have been convicted of sex crimes since 1965, and 33 now face charges. Crimes and punishment vary widely. John R. Hanlon, 74, is serving a life sentence for rape in Massachusetts. Robert Burkholder, 82, is serving a 30-day sentence in Michigan for molesting a teenage boy in a Detroit parish.
Burkholder will be listed as a registered sex offender when he gets out, as may others. Three other priests already are listed as registered sex offenders and are being monitored by the states in which they live. They are Edward Pipala, 63, of Mount Vernon, N.Y; Robert M. Burns, 53, of Concord, N.H.; and Ralph Strand, 64, of Mundelein, Ill.
Pipala was convicted of molesting three teens in Goshen, N.Y., and admits to abusing at least 50 others. Burns served nearly six years for molesting a boy in his apartment in Salem, N.H. Strand served four years for sexually abusing an altar boy.
Another convicted priest, Siegfried Widera, 61, pleaded guilty to abusing a child in 1973 and was put on probation in Wisconsin. He went to work in a family packing-crate business and now is a fugitive -- he fled in the wake of new charges for abuse in the 1970s.
Removal from the priesthood
One extreme option for a priest who has been removed from his ministry is laicization, in which he is returned to lay status, either by being defrocked by the church involuntarily or released from vows at his own request. USA TODAY's research shows 22 of the accused priests in the 10 dioceses have been laicized.
Victims groups such as the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) have demanded that all proven or admitted abusers be defrocked. But bishops hesitate to impose what Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., calls the ''gravest penalty for a priest.''
The bishops say that if a priest is kicked out of the priesthood but hasn't been convicted of a crime, no one will monitor him.
For that reason, the dioceses have preferred another response. In 103 cases, they've removed accused priests from all duties, though technically they remain members of the priesthood. Though still under the authority of the church, they are forbidden to dress as priests.
Most still receive their salaries or minimal financial support and health benefits. Many have been out for years.
Living in limbo
The group of priests that will be paying the most attention to the bishops' deliberations this week falls into yet another category: Priests suspended from duty while awaiting judgment.
In the 10 dioceses studied, 59 priests have been placed on leave pending investigation. Another 14 who had admitted abuse, undergone treatment and returned to restricted ministries have also been pulled from their posts. These two groups, 73 priests, wait in limbo.
Joseph Galante, a bishop of Dallas and an expert in canon law, was not surprised by the number of cases in limbo, particularly those in which the allegations are decades old.
''Many of these are cases where secular authorities did not do a serious investigation because they knew it would not be something they could prosecute under the state's statute of limitations,'' he says. ''But now the church will investigate these cases and it should.''
The investigations have resulted in three priests being cleared and returned to ministry: The Rev. Bruno Ugliano of Newark and Monsignor Michael Smith Foster of Boston this year and the Rev. Francis O'Grady of Los Angeles in 1999. O'Grady has since retired.
Single accusations
Despite an intense media focus on high-profile serial pedophiles, 20 priests account for more than 500 of the publicly known accusations, USA TODAY found, while 95 men (40%) are accused by one person.
Contacted Sunday to comment on the findings, Galante said with a deep sigh, ''I wish I were shocked.''
Public outrage has been stoked by the dramatic stories of pedophile priests, he says, but USA TODAY'S numbers ''show that it is too simplistic to say that everybody has multiple victims or everybody has a preference for children,'' Galante says.
''The extreme cases have been reported disproportionate to the numbers,'' says Boston College's Pope, citing the ''particularly flamboyant'' cases of Boston priest Paul Shanley, who is facing 10 counts of child rape and six counts of indecent assault and battery, and ex-priest John Geoghan, also of Boston, who was convicted of indecent assault; he faces two criminal trials and about 90 civil suits. He is in prison.
The revised policy makes no distinctions between multiple offenses with children and a single act of sexual relations with a teenager.
''A 25-year-old priest having a relationship with a 17-year-old boy is not the same as having sex with a 5-year-old. It's not right but it's still not the same,'' Pope says.
The revision bishops will vote on this week still would force anyone who is an admitted or proven abuser out of ministry. Even if a tribunal judges an accused priest to be innocent, the bishop can still refuse to assign him to a post.
Allegations that are years or even decades old are particularly insidious, says Donald Steier, a Los Angeles attorney who has defended several accused priests.
Some of his clients are in their 70s and 80s and can't recall details from 30 years ago that might prove they were far from where an alleged incident happened. ''Just getting them to focus is very difficult,'' Steier says. ''If you can get them to remember a name, it's remarkable. And then, it's very likely that the person is dead.''
But victims' advocates say it is equally unfair to write off accusations such as fondling or groping or sharing pornography as merely misunderstood horseplay. Boston attorney Carmen Durso, who represents 70 victims in lawsuits against several Boston priests, says those could be early signs ''of someone who is going off the tracks, and the other victims of his more serious crimes have yet to come forward. Just because there's only one allegation doesn't mean it's not significant. It may be one allegation -- so far.''
This week, the bishops must balance the demands of the public, the anguish of victims and the pleas of many priests. But however slow and painful new procedures with trials and appeals to the Vatican, it must be done if a priest is to be removed, Lori says.
''It's not in anyone's interest for the church to be cavalier with the rights of priests and to allow innocent priests to be unjustly removed,'' Lori says. ''At the same time, it is quite clear we have to protect children and young people, and give victims justice.''