One of the priests in the Pennsylvania child sexual abuse Grand Jury report did

[MineralMan]

something remarkable, I think.

Once he had groomed the child and had managed to abuse the child, he gave that child a gold cross to wear. The implication was that this was in order to identify the child as a tractable victim, according to the news story at the link below:

The priests, George testified, had a group of favored boys who they would take on trips and give gifts.

"He (Zirwas) had told me they, the priests, would give their boys, their altar boys or their favorite boys these crosses," George testified. "So he gave me a big gold cross to wear."

In the report, the grand jury said, the crosses "were a designation that these children were victims of sexual abuse. They were a signal to other predators that the children had been desensitized to sexual abuse and were optimal targets for further victimization."

https://www.ydr.com/story/news/2018/08/15/pa-grand-jury-report-catholic-priest-abuse-most-shocking-cases-clergy-sexual-abuse/995904002/

This goes far beyond simply not reporting child sexual abuse that was revealed in the confessional. Rather, it indicates a cooperative group of abusers who signaled each other when a child was found who could be abused. I find this particular story particularly disgusting and indicative of a culture of abuse, not just random cases of child sexual abuse.

These children were being preyed upon by a veritable ring of priests and passed along from one to another. This isn't just not reporting from the confessional. Not in any way, but it was all covered up all the same. In that place, at least, the abuse was organized, not just random.

How is this not corruption on a larger scale than individual abusers and their victims? Did similar groups of abusive priests operate in other places? How prevalent was this sort of thing? We do not yet know.