The
parish transfers of abusive priests were a pastoral practice that greatly contributed to the aggravation of
Catholic sex abuse cases. Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children, rather than seeking to have them permanently returned to the lay state by
laicization. The Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about some of the alleged crimes committed, but reassigned the accused instead of seeking to have them permanently removed from the priesthood...
Instead of reporting the incidents to
police, many dioceses directed the offending priests to seek psychological treatment and assessment...
In response to criticism that the Catholic hierarchy should have acted more quickly and decisively to remove priests accused of sexual misconduct, contemporary bishops have responded that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served.
Similar practices among public school administrators...
as did the Boy Scouts of America