Washington, June 09: The Roman Catholic Church has removed 218 priests from their positions this year because of child sexual abuse allegations, but at least 34 known offenders remain in church jobs, a Washington Post survey reported Sunday. The Post survey also found at least 850 U.S. priests have been accused of sexual misconduct with minors since the early 1960s, and more than 350 of them were removed from the ministry before this year.
The Post said the numbers were considerably higher than previously disclosed and showed the scope of the sex abuse scandal that has hit the Catholic Church. They also underscored the shortage of reliable statistics on the church's sex abuse problem, it said.

The newspaper said it conducted the survey by contacting each of the nation's 178 Roman Catholic dioceses. It said 96 responded and 82 did not, but supplementary data was gathered from newspapers, church newsletters and diocesan Web sites.
As the nearly 300 active U.S. bishops head for Dallas this week to debate and vote on a national policy on priests accused of sexual misconduct, they don't know the extent of the problem and have made no real effort to find out, the newspaper said. Bureau Report