The head of a lay committee looking into historic child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church said Tuesday the problem in the past had been “widespread” and on some occasions reached “truly endemic” proportions.
Pedro Strecht, a psychiatrist who heads Portugal's Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Catholic Church, said his panel has compiled a list of 424 alleged victims. Before the committee started its work in January, senior church officials had claimed that only a handful of cases had occurred.
