What Was Known

The Attorney General's report of 23 July 2003 followed a 16-month investigation that used a grand jury, prosecutors and the State Police. It states that, according to the Archdiocese's own files, 789 victims had complained of sexual abuse by members of the clergy and that 250 priests and church workers stood accused. These are complaints in the Archdiocese's files and were not adjudicated. The report states that the actual number of victims is no doubt higher and that, with other sources, the number likely exceeds one thousand.

The report states that the abuse occurred over at least six decades under three successive Archbishops. It concludes that the evidence showed an institutional acceptance of abuse and a massive and pervasive failure of leadership. It states: "For decades, Cardinals, Bishops and others in positions of authority within the Archdiocese chose to protect the image and reputation of their institution rather than the safety and well-being of children." It finds that a claim by the Cardinal or the senior managers that they did not know about the abuse "is simply not credible." It states that the files of more than 102 priests show that senior managers were aware in the 1980s of multiple allegations against them.

The report states that determining the magnitude is difficult, if not impossible, partly because the Archdiocese failed to keep precise and organized records.

The Attorney General found no evidence sufficient to charge the Archdiocese or its senior managers with crimes under the state law then in force. The mandatory reporting statute of 1973 did not include clergy and other church workers among mandated reporters until May 2002. The report states: "None of these statutes may be applied retroactively to address the past conduct of Archdiocese officials."

The report also records what it did not find. It states that the investigation did not produce evidence of recent or ongoing abuse of children, and adds that it is far too soon to conclude that the abuse has stopped. Its opening letter states: "Throughout the history of the United States, the Catholic Church in America has been responsible for countless good works."

The National Review Board, created under the bishops' Charter, commissioned the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to study abuse of minors by Catholic priests and deacons. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops funded the study. The 2004 report states that John Jay was chosen because it is a secular institution. Dioceses, eparchies and religious communities supplied data in three surveys, and Ernst & Young stripped identifiers. The 2011 report states that 97 percent of dioceses and eparchies responded.

The 2004 report states: "This report is descriptive in nature." It states that it is impossible to determine from its surveys what percent of all actual cases between 1950 and 2002 have been reported to the Church and are in its dataset. It states that less than 13 percent of allegations were made in the year the abuse allegedly began and that more than 25 percent were made more than 30 years after it began. It states that approximately one-third of all allegations were reported in 2002 and 2003, two-thirds since 1993, and that "prior to 1993, only one-third of cases were known to Church officials."

The report states that police had been contacted about 1,021 priests with allegations, 24 percent of the total, that 384 instances led to criminal charges and that 252 priests were convicted. It states: "Overall, fifteen percent of priests were reported to the police by a victim. A much smaller number were reported by a diocese or religious community." It reports $472,000,000 paid by the time of its surveys, not including an $85,000,000 Boston settlement.

The 2011 study, Causes and Context, states: "By 1985, bishops knew that the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests was a problem, but they did not know the scope of the problem. Though more than 80 percent of cases now known had already occurred by 1985, only 6 percent of those cases had been reported to the dioceses by that time." Of the 10,667 incidents in the 2004 data, it states, 810 had been reported to dioceses by 1985.

On the response, the 2011 study states that most diocesan leaders responded when allegations were made, but that the response typically focused on the priest rather than the victim. It states there is little evidence that diocesan leaders met directly with victims before 2002. It states that leaders were more likely to respond within the institution, using investigation, evaluation and administrative leave, and that many actions were not transparent to those outside the Church. It also states that this framework is not an atypical response to deviant behavior by members of an institution.

The 2011 study states that incidents rose steadily from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s and declined sharply after 1985. Reports made to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate from 2004 to 2009 show the same distribution; the rate of decline between 1980 to 1984 and 1990 to 1994 is 76.4 percent in the 2004 data and 77 percent in the later reports. The study states that the rise was influenced by social factors in American society generally, that no single cause is identified, and that some bishops were innovators while others were slow to respond.

The 2004 report qualifies its own peak, 1970 to 1980, because additional allegations for those periods may surface. All John Jay datasets are allegations supplied by the Church. The 2011 study does not compare the decline with non-church institutions. The 2011 study describes a 2006 supplementary report on the 2004 data.

The Pennsylvania 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury served for 24 months and reviewed half a million pages of internal diocesan documents from six of the state's eight Catholic dioceses: Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton. These six account for 54 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. The Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown dioceses were the subject of earlier grand juries. The report states that the documents contained credible allegations against more than 300 priests and that more than 1,000 child victims were identifiable from the Church's own records. It states that the grand jury believes the real number is in the thousands.

The report states that almost every instance it found is too old to be prosecuted, and that two presentments were brought within the statute of limitations. It states of the documents: "The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid 'scandal.' That is not our word, but theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered." It states that complaints were kept in a "secret archive" and that Church law requires a diocese to maintain such an archive.

FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit agents testified before the grand jury. According to the report, they identified seven factors that arose repeatedly: euphemisms for abuse, deficient or biased internal investigations, bias in treatment providers, a lack of public disclosure, continued financial support, transfer rather than removal, and insufficient reports to law enforcement. The report states that the agents were clear that no one will know how many abusers and victims there were. These are the grand jury's account of the testimony.

The report records the dioceses' responses and changes. It states that much has changed over the last fifteen years, that five bishops submitted statements and that the Erie bishop appeared. It states that the Church now appears to advise law enforcement of reports more promptly and that internal review processes have been established. It states that the Scranton bishop gave all accused names to law enforcement and that the Harrisburg bishop began public identification. The Erie diocese's response of 20 June 2018 apologizes to each and every victim. The report states that the Erie diocese, on advice of counsel, withheld material under subpoena and that the grand jury obtained the documents with a search warrant.

The grand jury's assessment of the 2002 Charter is partly favorable. It states that on the whole the Charter moved things in the right direction and that the grand jury found a significant increase in the number of crimes against children reported to the police. It also states that the Charter did not require bishops to remove abusers and that the bishop decided. It states that review boards were sometimes used as investigative mechanisms to build a defense case for potential litigation against victims.

Priests named in the report challenged its release. They argued that its findings were false or misleading, that they were denied due process, and that release would impair their reputations. In an opinion of 27 July 2018 (190 A.3d 560) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that large portions could be released while the challenges were reviewed, and ordered an interim version with temporary redactions limited to those who had lodged challenges. The interim redacted report was released on 14 August 2018.

In an opinion of 3 December 2018 the Court made the redaction permanent for the petitioners, who are 11 of the more than 300 priests named in the report. It held that this was the only viable due process remedy to protect their constitutional right to reputation. It reasoned that a report finding that named individuals committed criminal acts, with no likely future criminal proceeding, presents a substantial risk of impairment of that right, and that review for a preponderance of the evidence is best suited to adversarial proceedings, which a grand jury proceeding is not. The Court did not hold the report's findings false. The redaction covers the 11 petitioners and not the rest of the report.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse issued its final report on 15 December 2017. Volume 16 covers religious institutions. Catholic Church authorities provided claims data covering 1980 to 2015. The volume's summary gives the period as 1 January 1980 to 28 February 2015, and a later page gives it as ending 31 December 2015; the Commission's text is inconsistent on the end date. Of 201 Catholic authorities surveyed, 92 reported receiving one or more claims.

The data record 4,444 claimants in 4,756 claims and 1,880 known alleged perpetrators, with 530 further alleged perpetrators whose identities were not known. Of the known alleged perpetrators, 30 percent were priests, 32 percent religious brothers, 5 percent religious sisters and 29 percent lay people. Payments were made on 3,057 claims, totaling $268.0 million, of which $250.7 million was monetary compensation on 2,845 claims. The average delay between the first alleged incident and the claim was 33 years. The Commission also states that, weighted by the time priests ministered between 1950 and 2010, 7 percent of the priests in the survey were alleged perpetrators.

The Commission states that these data cannot be used to determine the incidence or prevalence of child sexual abuse in religious institutions, and that they represent only the people who came forward. It states that it does not know exactly how many children experienced sexual abuse in religious institutions in Australia.

The Commission states that numerous cases showed senior officials of Catholic authorities knew of allegations in Catholic institutions and failed to take effective action, and that Catholic leaders were aware of the problem well before the last two decades of the twentieth century. It states: "We have concluded that there were catastrophic failures of leadership of Catholic Church authorities over many decades, particularly before the 1990s." It states that the avoidance of public scandal, the maintenance of the Church's reputation and loyalty to priests and religious largely determined the responses, and that complaints were not reported to police or other civil authorities.

The Commission states that removing priests and religious from locations where allegations arose and transferring them was one of the most common responses before the national procedures of the early 1990s. It states that untrue or misleading reasons were sometimes given when the priest or religious left. It states that the authorities did not engage with canonical processes in the decades before the early 1990s.

The Commission credits later changes. The Australian bishops set up a dedicated committee in 1988 and adopted national protocols in 1990, which, the Commission states, retained a focus on the alleged perpetrators and were implemented sporadically. Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response followed in 1996, and the Commission states that from the mid-1990s there were some improvements. It also states that processes to dismiss priests and religious appear to have been rarely used during the 1990s and early 2000s. The Commission's recommendations on Catholic practice, including on celibacy, are its own recommendations and are not examined here.

The Royal Commission held its public hearing in Case Study 29 in July and August 2015 and dated its report of the case study October 2016. Watchtower Australia produced about 5,000 documents under summons, including case files relating to 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse dating back to 1950. The Commission states that the data were for the most part uncontested by Watchtower Australia.

The Commission states that since 1950 the organization in Australia recorded allegations, reports or complaints of child sexual abuse against 1,006 of its members, and that the records include admissions by 579. It states that the allegations relate to at least 1,800 alleged victims. Of the 1,006, 108 were elders or ministerial servants at the time of the first alleged abuse, and 28 were appointed as elders or ministerial servants after an allegation. Of the 1,006, 401 were disfellowshipped and 230 of those were later reinstated.

The Commission states: "there is otherwise no evidence before the Royal Commission of the Jehovah's Witness organisation having reported to police or other secular authority a single one of the 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse recorded in the case files held by Watchtower Australia." It states that no witness for the organization could identify an instance of the organization reporting. It states that the organization instructs elders to comply with mandatory reporting laws and that there is no evidence of a general policy requiring or advising elders to report when not required by law.

The organization's own review found that 383 alleged perpetrators had been dealt with by police or secular authorities and that 161 had been convicted. The Commission states that it is not possible to conclude that any of those convictions came about because of reports by the organization.

Watchtower and the other respondents made submissions that the Commission records. They submitted that abuse within a family is not institutional abuse; that the organization does not operate schools, orphanages or youth activities; that there was no evidence for 1,800 victims; that the definition of abuse used was broad; that an adult survivor has the right to decide whether to report; that most jurisdictions had no mandated reporting obligation; and that in many cases victims or their families did not want secular authorities involved. The Commission replied: "We do not find it necessary to comment on these submissions. The numbers tell their own story." Before the hearing, the organization had not considered concealment offenses to be independent of mandatory reporting laws.

The Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin submitted its report in July 2009 under the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004. The report covers the response of Church and State authorities to a representative sample of complaints and suspicions between 1975 and 2004. It states that it had no remit to establish whether abuse occurred and that its investigation is concerned only with the institutional response. It states that complaints, suspicions or knowledge concerned 172 named priests and 11 unnamed priests, 102 of them within its remit, and that it examined 46 priests in the sample. It states that complaints against the 46 involved over 320 children and that 11 of the 46 pleaded guilty or were convicted. It records one clear case of a false accusation and states that the number of complaints should not be equated with actual instances of abuse.

The Commission states that officials had repeatedly claimed to have been on a "learning curve" before the late 1990s and that it does not accept those claims. It states that the Archdiocese's preoccupations until at least the mid-1990s were "the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets." It states that all other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. It states that the Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules, and that only two canonical trials took place over 30 years.

The Commission states that the Archbishops of the period did not report knowledge of child sexual abuse to the Gardai in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s. It states that the Archdiocese first allowed the names of 17 priests to be given to the Gardai in November 1995, when the Archdiocese knew of at least 28 priests against whom there had been complaints. It states that officials first began to notify the civil authorities of complaints in late 1995.

The Commission states that the Archdiocese took out insurance in 1987, that the Archbishops by then had information on complaints against at least 17 priests, and that the step "was an act proving knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost to the Archdiocese and is inconsistent with the view that Archdiocesan officials were still 'on a learning curve'."

The Commission also reports on the State and on later changes. It concludes that the State authorities facilitated the cover-up by not ensuring that the law was applied equally and by leaving Church institutions beyond the reach of normal law enforcement. It states that senior members of the Gardai, including the Commissioner in 1960, regarded priests as outside their remit. It states that the situation improved from the start of the Framework Document in 1996 and that all complaints are now reported to the Gardai. An Archbishop's explanation for the 1995 disclosure, which the Commission records, was that giving the files to the Gardai created the greatest crisis in his position because of confidentiality duties.

A second Irish inquiry covers a different set of institutions. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (the Ryan Commission) reported on 20 May 2009 on industrial and reformatory schools, most of them run by Catholic religious congregations, from 1936. Its Executive Summary states that sexual abuse was pervasive in boys' institutions, that cases were managed to minimize public disclosure, that members of a congregation found to be abusing were dealt with internally and not reported to the Gardai while lay people were generally reported, and that offenders were transferred. It states that the Department of Education's deferential attitude toward the congregations compromised its inspection of the schools. It records that the congregations asserted that knowledge of sexual abuse was not available in society at the time, and it rejects the assertion because abuse was a criminal offense.

The bishops' conference and the conference of religious superiors asked for the commission, and its mission statement is dated 20 November 2018. Its 21 volunteer members include no member of the Church and no victim. Its cost, estimated to late 2021, was 2.6 million euros. It used a survey of 28,010 adults by Inserm and EHESS, an appeal for testimonials, a study of about 2,000 perpetrator cases in Church, justice and press archives, and interviews with 11 perpetrators.

The Commission's English summary states its estimate of 216,000 child victims of members of the clergy and religious orders from 1950 to 2020, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 165,000 to 270,000. Including persons connected to the Church, the estimate rises to 330,000, and the summary states that more than a third of assaults in the Church were committed by lay persons. From archives it estimates between 2,900 and 3,200 perpetrators and treats this as a lower limit. It states that the statistics must be treated with caution, because the silence of victims, their families and the Church limits knowledge. The summary places the estimate beside survey estimates for other settings of French society; those figures are in the summary and are not reproduced here.

On knowledge, the summary states that from 1950 to 1970 the Church's desire to protect itself from scandal and to save the aggressors dominated its policy while it concealed the fate of the victims. It states that over the greater part of the period the Church's attitude could be summarized as concealment, relativization or even denial, with a recognition dating only from 2015. It states that the Church began to recognize victims in 2010 when it started to report cases to the judicial system.

The summary records the Commission's qualification of this finding: "It is not that the violence was organized or accepted by the institution (although this did happen in a very small number of communities or institutions), rather that the Church did not have any clear idea how to prevent such violence or indeed even see it." It states that since 2000, and even more since 2016, the Church has taken important steps, and that these measures have often come very late and been applied unequally. The Commission made 45 recommendations.

A consortium of the universities of Mannheim, Heidelberg and Giessen carried out the study for the German Bishops' Conference, and all 27 dioceses committed by contract to take part. The study reviewed 38,156 sets of personnel records and reference files from 1946 to 2014 and found information on allegations against 1,670 clerics, 4.4 percent of the clerics whose records were reviewed. It attributes 3,677 children and juveniles to those 1,670 clerics. It calls these figures a conservative estimate and purely descriptive. The study uses the term accused person and states that it did not pursue a legal or criminalistic approach.

The study states that the researchers did not have access to the Church's original files. It states that staff of the dioceses, or law firms the dioceses commissioned, reviewed the archives and computer files under the consortium's stipulations. It states that its findings concern only the known area of abuse, that all frequency information underestimates the actual situation, and that generalizations beyond its areas of application are not permitted. It states that among clerics whom the Church classified as plausible in compensation applications, only half of the personnel records contained a corresponding reference, so that half of all cases would not have been found by a review of personnel records alone.

The study reports that personnel records and other documents relevant to previous investigations had been destroyed or manipulated, and that it was not possible to determine the number of files affected. It reports that 37.7 percent of the accused faced criminal charges, that 19.4 percent of criminal charges were brought by representatives of the Church, and that 14.0 percent of the accused were reported to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It reports an average of more than 13 years from the first act to criminal proceedings, 22 years to proceedings under canon law and 23 years to notification of that Congregation. It reports that about a quarter of the canon law proceedings that were initiated ended with no sanctions.

On transfers, the study reports that dioceses stated that 18.3 percent of transfers of accused persons within a diocese and 25.6 percent between dioceses were related to an allegation, and that there were indications that receiving parishes or dioceses were not informed in the majority of these transfers. The study states that no national or international studies had examined the proportion of accused employees in comparably large non-church institutions.

This section follows an English translation by the bishops' conference secretariat that the research consortium did not authorize.

The Catholic report of 10 November 2020 states that between 1970 and 2015 the Church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse against more than 900 individuals connected to the Church, including priests, monks and volunteers. In the same period there were 177 prosecutions resulting in 133 convictions. The data come from a review the Church itself commissioned, which gathered information from each diocese and 328 religious institutes. Of the 328 religious orders, 264 declared that they had no complaints to report, and the review excluded state-run Catholic schools. The Inquiry states that the true scale is likely to have been much higher and that more than 100 allegations a year have been reported since 2016.

The Inquiry states: "Responses to disclosures about sexual abuse have been characterised by a failure to support victims and survivors in stark contrast to the positive action taken to protect alleged perpetrators and the reputation of the Church." It states that the Church's neglect of children in favor of protecting its reputation conflicted with its mission, and that resistance to external intervention was widespread.

The Inquiry credits changes. The Nolan report of 2001 made 83 recommendations, and the Cumberlege review of 2007 found that 79 of the 83 had been addressed in full or in part. The Inquiry states that the changes resulted in improvements over the years, with slower progress in other areas. It records an apology of May 2019 by the Archbishop of Westminster: "We humbly ask forgiveness ... for our slowness and defensiveness and for our neglect of both preventative and restorative actions."

The Anglican report of 6 October 2020 covers the Church of England and the Church in Wales. It states that the total number of convicted offenders associated with the Church from the 1940s to 2018 is 390, that 449 concerns about recent abuse were reported in 2018, more than half relating to church officers, and that the Church's main insurer managed 217 claims between 2003 and 2018. The Inquiry states: "Senior clergy often declined to report allegations to statutory agencies, preferring to manage those accused internally for as long as possible." It states that the Church of England did not properly resource safeguarding until at least 2015. It records that funding has since increased considerably, and it recommends that safeguarding officers and not clergy decide on referrals.

The counts are convictions, complaints and claims, and each church's figures describe a different measure. They are reported here in their own units.

The Convention's messengers voted in June 2021 to have the Sexual Abuse Task Force commission an independent investigation, and the task force engaged Guidepost Solutions on 9 September 2021. The investigation covered January 2000 to 14 June 2021, with about 330 interviews and over five terabytes of data. The Executive Committee voted on 5 October 2021 to waive attorney-client privilege. The report states that the task force and not the Executive Committee is the client.

The report states of senior Executive Committee leaders and outside counsel: "a few senior EC leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the EC's response to these reports of abuse. They closely guarded information about abuse allegations and lawsuits, which were not shared with EC Trustees, and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the exclusion of other considerations." It states that for almost two decades survivors and other Southern Baptists contacted the Executive Committee to report people in the pulpit or employed as church staff.

On the list, the report states that since 2007 an Executive Committee staff member had maintained a list of accused ministers in Baptist churches, with the minister's name, year reported, news articles, state and denomination. The most recent version contained 703 names, of which 409 were believed to be SBC-affiliated at some point. The report states that despite collecting the reports for more than 10 years there is no indication that anyone took action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches. The list was compiled from news reports. Guidepost's own check found that nine of the 703 remained in active ministry or connected to ministry, two of them associated with an SBC church.

On counsel's advice, the report states that outside counsel advised the Executive Committee that staff should not undertake to elicit further information or details about reports of abuse, so that the Committee would not assume a legal duty to take further action. It states that in March 2008 counsel advised the staff member who received anonymous calls about a pastor that neither the staff nor the Committee had a legal duty to take further action. It states that a 2007 proposal for a database of accused molesters was rejected in 2008 on grounds of church autonomy, although outside counsel had submitted a memo on how it could be accomplished consistent with polity. It states that a December 2006 staff memo suggested the Convention could disallow churches that hire or retain a minister with a credible criminal report of having sexually abused a minor, and that Guidepost found no indication that anyone acted on the memo.

The report states the Convention's polity as the reason some leaders gave for not acting. Local churches are autonomous and cooperate voluntarily, and the Convention does not dictate church practices or ordain pastors. The report also states that public awareness about sexual abuse and prevention has changed over time. The Task Force's 2024 report states that the Convention deliberately has no mechanism for coercing local churches.

The Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force reported in June 2024 on its mandate from the 2022 and 2023 annual meetings. It states that the messengers overwhelmingly adopted in 2022 a recommendation to establish Ministry Check, an offender website, and that Ministry Check had not launched. The report states that its first categories would be people convicted of sexual abuse in criminal court and people found liable in civil court, and that these limits were chosen to curtail subjectivity and diminish potential liability. It states that vetting and legal review of nearly 100 names had been completed and that "To date, the SBC has contributed zero funding toward the vetting of names for Ministry Check." It states that the task force created a separate Abuse Response Commission because it had been informed that there was no viable pathway for reform within the Convention due to pressing insurance concerns. It records that Send Relief designated $1,000,000 in 2022 for a survivor care fund.

Two reports of 2025 come from news outlets and are graded reported. According to Religion News Service, the Executive Committee's president said at its meeting of 18 February 2025 that the database was not a focus. According to Illinois Baptist, on 12 March 2025 the Convention's attorneys said the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York had informed them that its investigation of the Convention and the Executive Committee had concluded, with no charges.

The bishops' conference adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in Dallas in June 2002. The articles described here are from the 2018 revision. In that text, Article 2 requires a review board whose majority are lay persons not in the employ of the diocese, functioning as a confidential consultative body to the bishop. Article 3 provides that dioceses are not to enter settlements that bind the parties to confidentiality unless the victim requests it. Article 4 requires dioceses to report an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor to the public authorities. Article 5 requires permanent removal from ministry for even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor that is admitted or established after an appropriate process under canon law. The preamble states that the bishops "apologize and take responsibility again for too often failing victims and the Catholic people in the past."

Pope Francis issued the norms Vos estis lux mundi on 7 May 2019, in force from 1 June 2019 for three years on an experimental basis, and updated them on 25 March 2023. The 2023 text is in force from 30 April 2023 and replaces the 2019 letter. The norms oblige a cleric or member of a religious institute with notice of a covered fact to report it promptly to the local Ordinary. They cover actions or omissions intended to interfere with or avoid civil or canonical investigations, and they apply to bishops through a procedure that runs through the Metropolitan. Dioceses must set up public, stable and accessible systems for submitting reports. Reporting does not violate office confidentiality, and no one may be required to keep silent about the content of a report.

The norms have stated limits. The duty to report runs to the local Ordinary, and a saving clause (Article 19 in 2019, Article 20 in 2023) leaves reporting to civil authorities to state law. The 2023 text exempts information learned in the internal forum from the clerical duty to report. The U.S. Charter separately requires reports to public authorities.

The Holy See's own report on Theodore McCarrick, issued by the Secretariat of State on 10 November 2020, concerns mostly adult conduct. It states that no limit was placed on the examination of documents, the questioning of individuals or the expenditure of resources, that there were over ninety witness interviews, and that the Acta are not published with the report. It does not examine culpability under canon law. It documents allegations about McCarrick that reached Holy See and U.S. Church officials from the 1990s, an inquiry of 2000 in which three of four New Jersey bishops gave the Holy See inaccurate or incomplete information about his sexual conduct with young adults, and no canonical process before 2018. It states that the Holy See had never received a complaint directly from a victim before 2017, and that the first known allegation of abuse of a person under 18 reached the Archdiocese of New York in June 2017. It states that after a process of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he was dismissed from the clerical state. The report is not a record of what the Holy See knew about child abuse in general.

The Southern Baptist developments, the Ministry Check website and the Abuse Response Commission, are in section 3.10. The English Catholic and Anglican changes are in section 3.9, the Irish Framework Document in section 3.6 and the French changes in section 3.7.

The record is not the same for every tradition. The records cited here contain no commission-level or court-level record of abuse allegations and institutional responses for Orthodox, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Latter-day Saints institutions. Section 3.12.4 describes a policy review that took evidence from some of them.

The Australian Royal Commission's private sessions were with 6,875 survivors to 31 May 2017, and 4,029 of them concerned religious institutions. Its Catholic claims data are described in section 3.4. The volume also lists numbers of survivors who came forward about other institutions, among them 70 about Jehovah's Witnesses, 25 about Jewish institutions and 7 about institutions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fewer than five survivors raised Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Islamic, Baha'i or Hindu institutions. The Commission states that such counts depend on who came forward and cannot show incidence. They are not compared here.

The Commission also made findings on two named institutions. In Case Study 22 it found that leaders of Yeshiva Bondi and Yeshivah Melbourne, institutions of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, did not report allegations to police or other civil authorities until at least the 2000s and handled them within the institution. The Commission records that witnesses from Jewish representative bodies and from the two institutions unanimously confirmed that the concepts of loshon horo and mesirah have no application in the case of child sexual abuse. These findings concern two institutions. The Commission's volume also covers Anglican case studies, the Salvation Army, the Uniting Church and a Pentecostal network, and states that the autonomy of Pentecostal churches meant senior pastors had discretion about adopting child protection policies.

In England and Wales the Inquiry's report of September 2021 on religious organizations took evidence from 38 organizations with a presence there. They include Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Pagan organizations, new religious movements such as Scientology and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and non-conformist and non-trinitarian Christian organizations. Ten organizations did not reply to requests for information. The Inquiry states that precise and reliable evidence about the scale of abuse in religious organizations and settings is not available. It states that the evidence leaves no doubt that child sexual abuse takes place in a broad range of religious settings, that there are barriers to reporting within some organizations, that no state body provides oversight of child protection in such settings, and that there was broad support among the organizations for some form of mandatory reporting. That inquiry examined policies and practices and did not count abuse.

The records cited here cover no U.S. Protestant denomination other than the Southern Baptist Convention and no commission-level record for the traditions listed in section 3.12.