A total of 178 allegations of abuse by clergy was received by the Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) in the nine-month period from April to December 2025.
As the NBSC has decided to move to calendar-year reporting, this latest report covers just the last nine months of 2025.
The previous full-year report, from the end of March 2024 to April of last year, said there had been 385 allegations of abuse during that period, meaning the latest report indicated “a small decrease, pro rata”, according to NBSC chief executive Aidan Gordon.
Of the 178 allegations received, 36 were from dioceses, with 141 from religious congregations, and one “other”, covering an 80-year period from the 1940s to the 2020s.
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As to the nature of the allegations involved, 154 (87 per cent) received in the reporting period concerned sexual abuse, while 14 (8 per cent) were of physical abuse, with 8 (4 per cent) not indicating the type of abuse.
Thirty-eight (78 per cent) of the allegations referred to incidents between 1960 and 1989. Just 4 (2 per cent) related to incidents since 2000. The report enters a caveat here, however, noting that 10 (6 per cent) of the allegations did not include a time frame.
A pattern observed by the NBSC in recent years is that a significant number of allegations it has received, generally, relate to the years from 1960 to 1989.
Of the alleged abusers, 115 (66 per cent) are deceased and nine (5 per cent) are in prison, with a further 11 (6 per cent) subject to a management plan, while 31 (18 per cent) have either been laicised, left the diocese/religious congregation or are out of ministry. Eight are listed as “unknown”.
As the NBSC is a non-statutory body with regulatory functions, there are barriers to others sharing personal data with it. It is unable to receive personal identifiers in these allegations due to data protection regulations.
This also makes it impossible to determine whether all 178 allegations reported during the last nine months of last year related to respondents who were previously known and also whether they had been reported in prior periods. That information is held by the relevant diocese, religious congregation or other church body.
The NBSC cannot cross-reference allegations it receives, to establish whether the accused is already known, to check whether the allegation may already have been reported to it by an alternative source or whether there has been more than one allegation against the accused or by the same person making the allegation.
This, too, is to avoid any data protection concerns and is why the NBSC continues to ask that personal data is not shared with it by any church body when requesting advice on, for example, data that identifies or could identify a living individual, or when notifying the NBSC of an allegation of abuse against one of its members.
Meanwhile, in the nine-month period of this latest report, advice on safeguarding was requested of the NBSC on 179 occasions.
