Factbox-New Zealand abuse scandal mirrored in other countries

Factbox-New Zealand abuse scandal mirrored in other countries

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon apologised and promised reforms on Wednesday after a public inquiry found some 200,000 children, young people and vulnerable adults were abused in state and religious care over the last 70 years.

Evidence of similar scandals has emerged in other countries in recent years.

AUSTRALIA

Like New Zealand, Australia has uncovered widespread abuse of children in state and religious care. A Royal Commission investigated the issue, reporting in 2017 that there had been tens of thousands of child victims, saying their abusers were "not a case of a few rotten apples".

The inquiry spanned religious, government, educational and professional organisations. Of survivors who reported abuse in religious institutions, more than 60% cited the Catholic Church.

UNITED STATES

The Catholic Church in the U.S. has been shaken to its core by myriad sexual abuse scandals since the Boston Globe newspaper revealed in 2002 that church officials in that city systematically covered up sexual misconduct by its clergy for decades.

That case prompted a flood of investigations nationwide, showing that the abuse of minors was not isolated to Boston but was a widespread phenomena across many dioceses in the U.S.

The scandals are not limited to the Catholic Church.

Complaints of sex abuse by pastors and staff in the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, were either ignored or covered up by top clergy for decades, according to an internal report released in 2022.

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) filed for bankruptcy in 2020 after several U.S. states enacted laws letting accusers sue over decades-old abuse allegations.

CANADA

On a trip to Canada in 2022, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for sexual abuse at schools for indigenous children run by Catholic orders, addressing a deep wound that many survivors wanted him to acknowledge.

More than 150,000 children were taken from their homes and many were subjected to abuse, rape and malnutrition in what Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 called "cultural genocide".

FRANCE

French clergy sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years, a major investigation released in 2021 found, and its authors said the Catholic Church had turned a blind eye to the 'scourge' for too long.

The head of the French conference of bishops, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said the church was shamed. Calling the report a "bombshell", he asked for forgiveness and promised to act.

IRELAND

Thousands of infants died in Irish homes for unmarried mothers and their offspring mostly run by the Catholic Church from the 1920s to the 1990s, an inquiry found in 2021, calling it an appalling mortality rate.

The inquiry further tarnished the reputation of the Church in Ireland after scandals over paedophile priests, abuse at workhouses and forced adoptions of babies.

Pope Francis begged forgiveness for the scandals during the first papal visit to the country in almost four decades in 2018.

SPAIN

Spain announced in April it would set up a fund, to be financed largely by the Catholic Church, to compensate an estimated 440,000 victims of decades of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, staff or teachers.

Last year, an ombudsman report on child sexual abuse committed by members of the Church estimated more than one in 200 Spaniards may have been sexually abused by Catholic priests.

The report said child abuses in the Church reached its peak during the decades of General Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship that ended in 1975, and began to decline in the 1980s as the society began to secularise.

PORTUGAL

A Church-funded Portuguese commission found last year that at least 4,815 minors had been sexually abused by clergy over seven decades, but the report's authors said their findings were just the "tip of the iceberg".

Portugal's Catholic Church pledged in April to financially compensate victims of child sexual abuse within the Church.

GERMANY

Some 2,225 people suffered sexual violence in Germany's Protestant Church at the hands of 1,259 suspected perpetrators over the last eight decades, said a study released in January, warning that the scandal was probably far deeper.

However, as elsewhere, the main focus has been on the Catholic Church in Germany. A report released in 2018 found thousands of children had been sexually abused by its clergy.

ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE

Pretty much every country in Europe has uncovered sex scandals within the Roman Church hierarchy.

CHILE

The entire Chilean bishops' conference offered to resign in 2018 after a Vatican investigation exposed widespread sexual abuse by priests and systematic cover-ups by church officials.

After initially defending a bishop accused of covering up abuse, Pope Francis admitted to making "grave mistakes" in handling the situation, and apologised to the victims.

MEXICO

Church investigations belatedly revealed appalling abuse within the Legionaries of Christ priestly order, with its Mexican founder Marcial Maciel shown to be one of the Church's most notorious paedophiles, even abusing children he had fathered secretly with different women.