Sickening New Report Names 43 Catholic Priests Who Sexually Abused 166 Children Since 1950 in Colorado

A 263-page report published Wednesday by the Colorado Attorney General's office paints a disturbing portrait of child sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church.

The Denver Post reports: “At least 166 children were sexually abused by 43 Catholic priests Catholic priests in Colorado over the past 70 years, and more than half of those children were abused after the state's three dioceses knew the priests were abusers, a state-led investigation found. The abuse spanned nearly every corner of the state — in an Estes Park trailer and Denver homes, in church rectories and at camps, according to a damning report published Wednesday by the Colorado Attorney General's Office. The youngest victim was a 5-year-old girl who was raped by a priest visiting her Pueblo school. The priest told her she would be committing a mortal sin if she reported what happened.”

The Denver Post also has an extensive list of the priests named.

CNN reports: “One of the priests named in the report, Father Harold Robert White, abused at least 63 children over 21 years.White, who was described in the report as the ‘most prolific known clergy child sex abuser in Colorado history,' served in six parishes from 1960 until he was removed from ministry in 1993.”When he had sexually abused enough children at a parish that scandal threatened to erupt, the Denver Archdiocese moved him to a new one geographically distant enough that White was not known there,” the report states.White died in 2006. He was never placed on restricted ministry or sent for a psychiatric evaluation, and he never underwent an investigation, the report says.”

The NYT reports: “But the investigation was criticized by victims' groups. They called it toothless and faulted its reliance on the voluntary participation of the Roman Catholic Church, which the report itself accused of a decades-long effort to hide potentially criminal activity from parishioners and the authorities. The report said that instances of abuse peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, but investigators said that because of shortcomings in church record-keeping and reporting practices they could not be sure the abuse was not continuing today.”