You're correct, according to the John Jay study: "The dioceses, eparchies, and religious institutes reported information on 4,392 individuals who had been the subject of at least one allegation of sexual abuse while serving in ecclesial ministry between 1950 and 2002. We found that this count of priests with allegations was 4.2 % of all diocesan priests in ministry for that time period and 2.7 % of all religious priests in ministry in the same period."
And by the time the story became national news, the peak of the allegations was a generation earlier: "When the events of sexual abuse were displayed as yearly counts by date of occurrence over the 52 years from 1950 to 2002, we observed a gradual but steady increase until the early 1980s and then a more marked, but equally steady decrease."
Thanks for the link. I knew that percentage of priests accused of abuse was pretty small. In all of the hysteria surrounding this scandal, people have lost sight of the fact that the vast majority of priests have never been accused of any sexual misconduct with minors. While it is scandalous that even a small percentage have been, the idea that priests are somehow more likely to abuse minors than other adults are or that celibacy somehow turns men into perverts is simply wrong.