More than 80 Catholic churches in the Boston archdiocese were ordered to close their doors to save overheads. Parishioners occupied some of them, sleeping on pews, in a hopeless bid to save them. But still the inexorable rot ate away at the fabric of the church.

The archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, 74, was forced to resign. He had paid a heavy personal price. This only son of an air-force colonel, who joined the priesthood in 1961 and became one of the most powerful men in the United States after fighting in the front line of Mississippi's civil-rights movement, was ÒretiredÓ to Rome — a life's work sullied because he put the church's name before the protection of his flock. Law had spent 18 years effectively protecting paedophile priests, who went on, time and again, to re-offend and rape children entrusted to their care by devout parents. It emerged that Law's response to overwhelming evidence of paedophile activity was simply to move the priest to another parish, often allowing them to continue working with children, to write them glowing references and tributes, and to pay off victims' families. More than 1,000 children in the Boston area were sacrificed in the interests of protecting the diocese from scandal.

The years of shielding abusive priests came back to haunt Law, when the weight of dammed-up outrage burst out of the confessional and swamped the church. Churches closed and the residences were sold to pay a massive legal bill that matched the enormity of the crime.

Investigations and the church's own files have revealed that more than 220 priests in the Boston archdiocese alone were guilty of molesting or abusing 789 children — and those were just the cases in which the victims were willing to come forward. It cost the archdiocese over $100m to settle claims from 500 victims. But the meltdown was not restricted to Boston. As the city's disgrace raged, more files were opened and investigations launched in other parts of the US. Hundreds, then thousands of victims across the country began to speak out. The high number of cases may have been dismissed as mass hysteria had it not been for the meticulous records kept by the Catholic Church itself. Over the past 50 years, its own internal investigations had secretly confirmed thousands of complaints, then buried them.

There are over 60m Catholics in the US; 194 archdioceses such as Boston, which average 100 parishes apiece; and nearly 45,000 priests to serve them all. As the victims have told their stories, so the archdioceses have paid the price. In Dallas the church has sold $11m worth of property to help fund a $30m settlement; in Providence, Rhode Island, the church has sold its bishop's summer residence to finance a $14m settlement for 36 cases of abuse; in California, Santa Rosa diocese has sold real estate to fund a $16m court case; and Orange County has paid over $100m to settle 87 lawsuits. Three dioceses — Spokane, Portland and Tucson — have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection; grand juries have begun hearings in Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Massachusetts. Eight bishops have resigned and more could follow as the revelations mount. And the church faces one monumental case in Los Angeles, where 544 victims may cost the church up to $1.5 billion.

The shame being heaped on the Catholic Church hierarchy is overwhelming. The governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating, has likened the Catholic Church in the US to the mafia. Congregations across the country have dropped by up to 20% as the faithful protest in support of transparency and reform; annual income of around $7.5 billion has dropped sharply; and many parish priests withheld the contents of their collection plates from diocese coffers for fear that the money would be used to fund legal actions rather than their pensions.

Over $800m has been paid in settlements to date, and that figure is rising. Such is the weight of outstanding cases that the bill could eventually reach more than $2 billion. The enormity of the church's cover-up is demonstrated by one simple fact: the number of actual convictions of priests for child molestation in the US in the past 50 years can be counted on one hand. Yet the church itself has finally admitted that for years it has harboured thousands of paedophile priests.

Catholic bishops in America have spent years enforcing their own code of omerta to keep its sordid secret. Official Vatican policy dictated that priest abuse was "an unspeakable crime". Nobody in authority within the church was allowed to speak openly about child molestation by ordained priests. Officials dealing with allegations of child abuse had to take an oath of perpetual silence. The punishment for breaking this rule: excommunication.

But one woman could no longer keep quiet. Maryetta Dussourd, 58, has been bottling up her knowledge for 25 years. On a cold day soon after Thanksgiving, she lets it all out. She starts calmly enough, drinking coffee in a hotel by Boston's harbour. By the time she has finished, a mountain of tear-soaked tissues lie shredded in front of her. They mirror her life — rent apart by her priest and the church's failure to protect her family.

When she was 21, Maryetta Gallant married a young soldier, Ralph Lafayette Dussourd. The Irish-American girl was raised with a traditional devotion to the Catholic Church. Her elder sister, Marge, was a postulate nun with a Carmelite nursing order. Within four years, Maryetta and Ralph had three sons.

A daughter followed a few years later. Maryetta's life was her family and the church. Her husband, a general handyman, ran the Little League baseball team their sons played in, and at weekends he painted, decorated and helped to maintain the fabric of St Andrew's Church in Jamaica Plain, where Maryetta had had her first communion and was a member of the prayer group run by the assistant pastor, Father John Geoghan. "We were enslaved by obedience," says Maryetta, who is still deeply religious.

"When you become a Catholic you find out that your route to heaven is through priests and obeying the Ten Commandments. You always had to be obedient to the priests, the bishops, the cardinal and the Pope. Obedience about sex in marriage, on birth-control issues, how you get pregnant — all of that happened to me. This was how we were trained. I was told that the institution of marriage was to raise children. When my husband lost his job after the place where he worked burnt down, I wanted to use birth control. The priest said I knew the laws of the church and that it was unacceptable."