A survey has found that the US Church spent about one billion dollars more in connection with the sex abuse crisis than the US$3 billion previously estimated, writes Michael Sean Winters.
The National Catholic Reporter studied relevant databases and calculated that total documented payouts since 1950 stand at just under US$4bn (£2.6bn).
A separate study in the Journal of Public Economics showed that the sex abuse crisis cost the US Church more than $2.3bn in lost revenue per year from smaller donations in areas hit hardest by the sex abuse scandal. “A scandal causes a persistent decline in charitable giving of about 1.3 per cent in the affected zip code,” the study found, a loss of an “order of magnitude” higher than the US$3bn figure. Northeastern states from Wisconsin and Michigan across to Massachusetts and Rhode Island were particularly hard hit.
12 November 2015, The Tablet
Estimate of total abuse payments ‘is out by US$1bn’
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