Already shaken by a yearlong sex scandal involving priests
and minors, the Roman Catholic Church has yet to face another critical
challenge: how to help thousands of nuns who say they have been sexually
victimized.
A national survey, completed in 1996 but intentionally
never publicized, estimates that a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholic
nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered
some form of sexual trauma.
