ABUSE OCCURRED AT EIGHTY-ONE PERCENT OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO’S PARISHES

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — The committee representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse in the bankruptcy of The Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco (“The Archdiocese”) has released, following bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali’s approval over the Archdiocese’s objection, data related to the claims filed in the bankruptcy (the “Claims Data”). Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones, LLP is counsel to the survivors’ committee.

Over 530 survivors filed claims against the Archdiocese of San Francisco alleging sexual abuse as children. The Archdiocese of San Francisco declared bankruptcy in 2023, which prevented individual survivors from continuing their individual state court cases and telling their individual stories. The survivors’ committee’s release of the Claims Data pulls information from those individual claims but paints a vivid picture of the abuse that occurred in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

“These numbers tell only a small part of this shocking narrative,” said Margie O’Driscoll, co-chair of the survivors’ committee. “For every person who came forward, there are more who have not come forward due to shame, fear of repercussion, or concern about their professional reputation,” she explained. O’Driscoll further noted the high percentage of locations of abuse, saying, “there is an obvious systemic issue revealed in this data that is alarming.”

Judge Montali noted that survivors “are not data points. They are aging survivors of clergy abuse, with stories that are both unique to themselves and similar to other survivors.”¹

“Each survivor’s experience cannot be diminished to numbers on a chart,” said Brittany Michael, of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP. “But the Claims Data tells its own story of the depth and breadth of abuse that occurred in this Archdiocese,” she added.

The following Claims Data shows many important statistics about the abuse that occurred within the Archdiocese:

• 81% (71 of the 88) parishes in the Archdiocese were implicated in the abuse claims.
• Survivors were as young as two and three years old when perpetrators associated with the Archdiocese began abusing them. More than half of the abuse allegations began when the survivor was ten years old or younger.
• 68 perpetrators were named by more than one survivor as having sexually assaulted them as children.
• There were over 110 allegations of anal or vaginal rape and over 210 allegations of oral rape.
• While the Archdiocese often refers to abuse as a historic problem, close to forty survivors who were abused in the last three decades came forward in the bankruptcy. Given what is known about delayed disclosure, the full extent of the abuse from the past three decades may not be known for years to come.

VIEW THE AGGREGATE CLAIMS DATA

¹ Memorandum Decision on Motion for Relief from Stay, Docket Number 1138.

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SOURCE Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones

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