The charter created a National Review Board, which was assigned responsibility to commission a descriptive study, with the full cooperation of the dioceses and eparchies, of the nature and scope of the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy.
The National Review Board engaged the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York to conduct a study analyzing allegations of sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses in United States.
Of the remainder 1,021 were reported to police and of those, 384 were charged, resulting in 252 convictions and 100 prison sentences; In total, out of the 109,694 priests who were surveyed, 100 were imprisoned.
In summary, over a 50-year period, out of more than 100,000 priests deacons and religious order clergy, 4,392 (~4.4%) were accused of sexual abuse, 252 (<0.26%) were convicted and 100 (<0.1%) sentenced to prison.
The John Jay study analyzed allegations of sexual abuse gathered via surveys of Catholic dioceses.
The study characterized these enticements as actions such as buying the minor gifts, letting the victim drive a car and taking youths to sporting events.
[6] The John Jay report catalogued more than twenty types of sexual abuse ranging from verbal harassment to penile penetration.
Instead of reporting the incidents to police, many dioceses directed the offending priests to seek psychological treatment and assessment.
According to the John Jay Report, nearly 40% of priests alleged to have committed sexual abuse participated in treatment programs.
[3] The Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about some of the alleged crimes committed, but reassigned the accused instead of seeking to have them permanently removed from the priesthood.
[10][11] In defense of this practice, some have pointed out that public school administrators engaged in a similar manner when dealing with accused teachers,[12] as did the Boy Scouts of America.
[13] Some bishops and psychiatrists have asserted that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling.
[6] From a legal perspective, the most serious criticism aside from the incidents of child sexual abuse themselves was by the bishops, who failed to report accusations to the police.