The article doesn't link to the primary source (of course they wouldn't do that). When I see articles like this, I always wonder if they fudged the cases to reach 5k. I recall all of the articles talking about how there are thousands of mass shootings in the US, including cases where 4 burglars got shot at by the home owner, but only one got injured. Or articles about school shootings including cases of someone accidentally firing a gun to the ground within a 1 mile radius of a school's playground in the middle of the night.
If this is actually 5k children being abused, that is bad. If although 4,999 cases are children missing a small amount of nutrients during lent, that doesn't sound nearly as bad.
In 58.5% of cases, victims mention that they knew of other cases of abuse, although their recollections of these vary considerably in terms of precision and accuracy.
In a very rough calculation, we estimate that the 512 victims knew of or were in contact with close to 4,300 other victims.
The methodology is similar to that used to estimate bird populations.
Australia has had Royal Commision Inquiries in the Catholic Church [1]:
An inquiry examining institutional sex abuse in Australia has heard 7% of the nation's Catholic priests allegedly abused children between 1950 and 2010.
In one religious order, over 40% of church figures were accused of abuse.
Over 4,440 people claim to have been victims between 1980 and 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was told.
512 interviews with actual people, they said the 5k were based on those interviews (example, some one said it was abused, but also other colleagues). 53% of the cases involved genital manipulation.
Most of them were abused as children, but they are much older now. Average age now is 52 years old, average time of abuses is 12 years old. A small percent of the abuses continues to this day. A small percentage of the abusers remain on the church to this day.
The statute of limitations expires by the age of 23, so only 25 were turned into criminal processes.
If this is actually 5k children being abused, that is bad. If although 4,999 cases are children missing a small amount of nutrients during lent, that doesn't sound nearly as bad.