Official finding Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Kentucky, USA · 2020

Kentucky's Covington and Lexington dioceses release independent-review findings naming 90 and 20 accused clergy

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Catholic priests, religious brothers, nuns and lay employees of the Diocese of Covington and Diocese of Lexington, diocesan leadership commissioning the independent reviews

Organization

Diocese of Covington, Diocese of Lexington

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The record concerns child sexual abuse committed under Catholic clerical, religious and lay-ministry authority within Kentucky's Covington and Lexington dioceses, disclosed through diocesan-commissioned independent review rather than an external state finding.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2020-08-01 · independent investigation and public disclosure

Diocese of Covington and Diocese of Lexington, independent reviews by former FBI agents. Following independent reviews of diocesan records dating to 1950, conducted by former FBI agents, both Kentucky dioceses published lists of clergy and personnel with allegations of child sexual abuse. Covington's list named 59 priests, six religious brothers, five nuns and 20 lay employees or deacons (90 total). Lexington's list named 20 priests, of whom the diocese stated only 10 had fully substantiated claims.

Documented coercion mechanisms

clerical and pastoral authority
parish, school and lay-ministry access to children
diocesan record-keeping spanning the 1950s to the present

Cited record

Sources

affected institution primary source primary disclosure Diocese of Covington, 'Substantiated Allegations List,' covdio.org.: The diocese's own published list resulting from the independent FBI-agent-led review, naming 90 individuals across clergy, religious and lay roles.
regional broadcast news contemporaneous corroboration WCPO Cincinnati, 'Diocese of Covington names 90 with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor' (2020).: Independent broadcast-news corroboration of the Covington list's release, count and methodology.
survivor advocacy legal summary corroboration AbuseLawsuit.com, 'Kentucky Dioceses Name Priests Accused of Sex Abuse' (Aug. 2020).: Corroborates the simultaneous August 2020 release by both dioceses and the Lexington diocese's own qualification that only 10 of 20 named priests had fully substantiated claims.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://covdio.org/safe-environment/substantiated-allegations-list/ Corpus classification: affected-institution-primary-source; evidentiary role: primary-disclosure. SHA-256 0d14e9a9d8fd671bcf8966459c55687a6365fe7f1e348989fca372d8a30ef116
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/diocese-of-covington-names-90-with-substantiated-allegations-of-sexual-abuse-of-a-minor Corpus classification: regional-broadcast-news; evidentiary role: contemporaneous-corroboration. SHA-256 493df1e6b4b7d29e01ce286ec31536a83af68a46a495d4992d0d4514172cca15
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.abuselawsuit.com/news/kentucky-dioceses-name-priests-accused-of-sex-abuse/ Corpus classification: survivor-advocacy-legal-summary; evidentiary role: corroboration. SHA-256 d24228b827a9f1fe0a6cac9dd5275beb88538e5ce1cd8e61094bd760f1f3d97c
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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