I have said previously that I know of several clergy abuse accusations that I knew were false.
Anyone else?
Rather than trying to mitigate this issue, we need to do as the Holy Father has recommended: prayers and penances for the purification of the Church. You should read, again, the Pastoral Letter of the Holy Father to the Church in Ireland.
All of this was forecast by St Pius X over a hundred years ago. And unless and until the Church returns to the traditional apostolic Faith, if not this attack from within, there will be something else.
We need to recall the words of St Paul: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. The purification that is ongoing is part of the necessary washing and scrubbing.
The way I read this article is that it is an effort to say, "See, the problem wasn't that bad." Well, perhaps the symptoms weren't as bad as originally reported, but the problem was 100% that bad: the problem of modernism and an abandonment of traditional, apostolic teaching. As Brian says, it should come as no surprise that this report comes from a Mahony hack -- one of the most modernist bishops in the entire Church.
When class action lawsuits are involved, people will say literally anything about anyone to get that money.
The number of these claims that are simply not credible is more than 50%.
And, as I've said before, the vast majority of believable abuse allegations in the US center again and again on a group of priests that came from Ireland via Boston and Brooklyn in a period spanning from about 1950 - 1975.
For all the people who claim via astroturf trial lawyer organizations like VOTF that they want "the truth", almost everything about this atrocity seems to be kept as vague as possible from their perspective.
The Catholic haters will not accept this as the truth.
I don’t personallly know of any but I’ve long suspected this was largely a case of fasle accusations.