Washington Post Misreporting

Last Year, 1,000 Told Of Abuse Priests; [FINAL Edition]
Alan Cooperman. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Feb 20, 2005. pg. A.01
Full Text (939 words)
Copyright The Washington Post Company Feb 20, 2005

More than 1,000 people reported to civil or church authorities in 2004 that they had been sexually abused as children by Roman Catholic priests, the second-largest number of allegations for any year on record, the U.S. bishops' conference said Friday....

Interpretation of the statistics was also complicated by a lack of data for 2003. That is because the John Jay study compiled statistics for each year from 1950 to 2002. Then the bishops voted to update the study annually beginning in 2004.

The peak number of allegations reported in any prior year on record was in 2001, when the abuse scandal erupted in Boston. More than 3,300 alleged victims came forward that year. In 2002, the number of allegations dropped to about 750, about the same number that was reported annually in the mid-1990s.

Actually:

The peak number of allegations reported in any prior year was in 2002, when the abuse scandal erupted. As a result of this error, the next sentence makes no sense. No data is available for 2003.