“The woman was a thief who did not keep her vows.” For over a year, the Roman Catholic Church has faced a reckoning over the crime of clerical sexual abuse. In response to this renewed call for transparency, Pope Francis acknowledged for the first time ever this February that nuns have been victims of sexual abuse by priests and bishops. One of the best approximations of the occurrence of nun abuse in the Catholic Church comes from a nationwide study of child sexual abuse published by the Australian government in 2017. The Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse gathered data from Catholic Church authorities in the country regarding claims of child sexual abuse received between Jan. 1, 1980 and Dec. 31, 2015. Like Cahill, Gleeson said she was raised in a staunchly Catholic family.

Source: Huffington Post April 11, 2019 13:00 UTC