This affair is indeed a disgrace Jim and must have been a horrific experience for the poor children involved, but trying to link this sort of abuse to any particular religious order seems to go against reason.....why do we not see this volume of abuse in other religions or even in other branches of Christianity?

I fear we must look elsewhere for the reasons why this evil seems so relatively common among the priesthood.

There have been no statistics released yet for the Irish child abuse, but a study of a similar case in the US in 2004 came up with the following interesting findings
• "The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14."