The denomination has offered counseling to victims. None of the abusers are currently serving in overseas mission programs with the church, but in six cases the panel sent its findings to officials…for possible disciplinary action.

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders formally apologized Friday to 30 people who they determined were sexually or physically abused in mission programs overseas, most of whom were children of missionaries serving across Africa and Asia between 1950 and 1990.

The apologies came with the release of a 546-page report that followed a nearly seven-year investigation of abuse in mission programs by a review board of the Louisville-based denomination.

It found cases of sexual abuse perpetrated on 14 victims in Cameroon, five in Congo, three in Ethiopia and seven in Thailand, and one case of physical abuse in Pakistan.

“To those who were abused, we offer our deepest apologies,” said Linda Valentine, executive director of the denomination’s General Assembly Mission Council, which oversees the denomination’s mission work. “I am sorry, and all of us in the leadership of the church are sorry for what has happened. We are horrified by what you have gone through, and we are grateful for your courage in bringing the abuse to light so that future generations of missionary children will not face the fear, the pain, and the trauma you endured.”

In one case, the panel found that members of a board overseeing a dormitory in the Congo failed to protect children from a teenage boy they knew was repeatedly sexually abusing other children in the 1980s.

In fact, the report found more instances of sexual abuse of minors by minors — 18 — than by adults, where there were 11 instances substantiated.

“In speaking with witnesses, this type of abuse was often the last to surface, which leads the Panel to believe that this abuse is some of the most hidden of all that occurs on mission fields,” the report said.

The report said the protection of children should have been a spiritual mandate. “God’s standard is that children are to be protected from harm,” it said.