The Catholic Church in the US has suffered from child abuse by clergy, notwithstanding the fact that the number of Catholic priests involved in such horrible acts is insignificant compared with the number of priests belonging to other Christian Churches.
Through its National Review Board, the US Episcopal Conference said that the Catholic Church has learnt some lessons from working with the victims of child abuse, the first of which is that it takes great courage for a victim to come forward with his or her trauma after years of silence and feelings of shame.
In such cases what is most important to the victim is to be believed, so the victim is very careful whom to trust for his or her healing.
These victims also want to see that the Church takes all necessary measures to prevent this abuse from happening again to more children. According to the board, today there are methods of therapy that work particularly well with and for victims of childhood sexual abuse, and individuals can be helped even after many years of unsuccessfully trying to simply forget about it.
It has been noted as well that this abuse has robbed some victims of their faith. For some this means loss of their Catholic faith but for others it means loss of any faith in God.