Church has mishandled abuse claims, poll finds

PORTLAND – Sixty-nine percent of Catholics in Maine believe the Roman Catholic Church has mishandled allegations of child sexual abuse against priests, according to poll results published Monday.

And four of 10 Catholics said their confidence or faith in the church has been shaken.

Catholics were only slightly less critical of church leadership than the entire group surveyed. Seventy-four percent of all Mainers said the church has handled the allegations fairly poorly or very poorly.

The Portland Press Herald-Maine Sunday Telegram commissioned the survey of 400 people, including 97 Catholics, last week. Critical Insights Inc.’s survey of randomly selected Mainers has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.

Among the survey’s other findings:

. Only 18 percent of all respondents said they have some or a great deal of confidence that church leaders are committed to openly addressing sexual abuse issues.

. Catholics are significantly more optimistic about how the church will handle future allegations. Thirty-eight percent of Catholics said they have some or a great deal of confidence that the issue will be addressed openly.

. Forty percent of Catholics surveyed said the sexual abuse allegations have affected their confidence or faith in the church, while 60 percent said they did not.

In recent weeks, officials from the Portland diocese have turned over some allegations of abuse to prosecutors, who are now investigating potential criminal charges.

Church officials last week agreed to give prosecutors all allegations of abuse dating back 75 years.

The diocese recently removed two Aroostook County priests who had admitted sexually abusing teen-agers. The statewide poll results find Mainers slightly more critical of the church than Americans as a whole.

Twenty-two percent of Mainers said the Roman Catholic Church has handled sexual abuse allegations fairly well or very well, compared with 29 percent of participants in a CNN-Time poll conducted two weeks earlier.

In Maine, 74 percent rated the church’s response as fairly poor or very poor, while that number was 64 percent in the national poll.

Willine Twombley of Standish was one of the respondents who said the church has handled the problem poorly.

“I think that it’s a terrible, terrible shame,” said the 78-year-old retired teacher. “It disgusts me no end.”