The tip of the iceberg - usually men in positions of authority, sexually abusing minors (more often boys) and causing lifelong physical, psychical and spiritual damage

News Item: New Zealand Herald 17 October 2009

It happened night after night, the deaf man said, sometimes in the priest's bedroom, sometimes in the bathroom, even in the confessional.

When he was a young boy at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf, Alessandro Vantini said, priests sodomised him so relentlessly he came to feel "as if I were dead".

This year, he and dozens of other former students did something highly unusual for Italy: they went public with claims they were forced to perform sex acts with priests.

For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country's most respected institutions.

Now, in the Vatican's backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly taking hold.

A year-long tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims.

The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros in civil damages to the victims, compared to US$2.6 billion ($3.5 billion) in abuse-related costs for the US diocese.