I would say that there have been between five and ten percent of priests doing the sexual assaults.
And another five to ten percent covering up. These are mostly motivated by cowardice, I believe.
The percentage of offenders is small, but a few wrongdoers can have a vast effect. Brendan Smyth had 143 victims, spread over a number of parishes. His criminal conduct poisoned every one of those parish communities. I don't know how a congregation can survive such a betrayal - even though it was just one man who did the crime.
Smyth was first suspected of sexual misconduct in the 1970s, but he was not arrested until 1991. I can't figure out the dynamics of what went on during that period. Did Smyth's superiors in the Norbertine order not believe the allegations, or were they trying to protect themselves from financial claims, or what?
This is what I cannot understand. With all of this going on, how could church authorities continue to allow it? To my knowledge, no church official has come forward to speak with total honesty about what happened.
I do have a theory. Almost every chancery office (administrative office) in almost every diocese, is staffed mostly by priests who are social misfits. They're the milquetoast types who cannot relate to people, so they cannot function for long as parish priests. I've met a lot of very creepy priests in chancery offices, and they quietly wield a lot of power. They serve to insulate bishops from honesty, and they deal with problems in cowardly, secretive ways under the bishop's authority - and without the bishop's knowledge. But in the end, the bishop is responsible for their actions. I can picture that - chancery people quietly moving offenders from one place to another while hushing everything up. Two or three quiet transfers a year can happen easily without anybody noticing - and can multiply the damage exponentially. And if a priest dares to speak up in complaint about a problem with another priest, he can easily be transferred to a remote, rural parish. The bishop is out making official visits all around the diocese, totally aware of what is going on in the chancery office. And bishops are usually transferred in from other locations, so they don't really know the priests they supervise.
And regular parish priests are isolated, rarely aware of what goes on oiutside their own parish - managing a parish is all they can deal with. And to a great extent, sex offender priests are very charming and engaging on the surface - and they often do their jobs as priests very well. Who would ever expect that such a charming, gentle person would be a child molester?

-Joe-