A scary article from the New York Times via Yahoo on the catholic priest sex abuse problem, Trail of Pain in Church Crisis Leads to Nearly Every Diocese.

Points I found interesting and horrifying at the same time:

¶The data show that priests secretly violated vulnerable youth long before the first victims sued the church and went public in 1984 in Louisiana. Some incidents date from the 1930's and 1940's.

"This has been going on for decades, probably centuries," said Richard K. O'Connor, a former Dominican priest who says he was one of 10 boys sexually assaulted by three priests in a South Bronx parish in 1940, when he was 10. "It's just that all of a sudden, they got caught."

¶Half of the priests in the database were accused of molesting more than one minor, and 16 percent are suspected of having had five or more victims.

¶Eighty percent of the priests were accused of molesting boys. The percentage is nearly the opposite for laypeople accused of abuse; their victims are mostly girls.

¶While the majority of the priests were accused of molesting teenagers only, 43 percent were accused of molesting children 12 and younger. Experts in sexual disorders say the likeliest repeat offenders are those who abuse prepubescent children and boys.

¶The survey also shows how pervasive the abuse has been. Using information from court records, news reports, church documents and interviews, the survey found accusations of abuses in all but 16 of the 177 Latin Rite dioceses in the United States.

¶The church is still covering up cases. Despite the pressure on bishops over the last year to reveal the extent of the abuse, some refused to release the number of accusations or the names of the accused priests.

One question keeps echoing through my head - what if they didn't get caught ... how long would the catholic church have allowed this go on if no one had said anything?