Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal

In the late 20th century, and especially at the turn of the 21st, the Catholic Church in several countries was confronted with a series of allegations concerning sexual abuse of children under the legal age of consent ¹ by Catholic clergy and religious.

Footnotes

1 The age of consent, that is, the age at which the law presumes a teenager has the physical, emotional and sexual maturity to make an informed adult decision to enter into sexual activity, differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, from a low teenage in Italy and Spain to a mid to high teens age elsewhere, for example 16 in the United Kingdom, 17 in Ireland. (Some states also provide different ages of consent for homosexual boys as against heterosexual boys and girls.) Yet separately the law may specify a different age where a teenager ceases to be a child and becomes an adult. As a result, where a difference exists, it may be perfectly legal to have sex with a child where the individual, though still deemed a child in law, is above the age of consent specified in local legislation.

Related Topics:
Italy - Spain - United Kingdom - Ireland

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2 Paedophilia and child sex abuse are not always the same: a paedophile may practice sexual abstinence, and not everyone who sexually abuses a child is a paedophile.

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3 Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0195145976

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