ROME (AP) — A culture of silence across Asia may be keeping many victims of clergy sex abuse there from coming forward, a top Asian church official told a Vatican-backed conference on Thursday.

Monsignor Luis Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila, said Asian deference to church authorities in places like the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Philippines may also have contributed to keeping a lid on reports. He said more and more victims have spoken out in the past five years in the Philippines, but incidents of priests keeping mistresses still far outpace reports of priests preying on children.

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