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The scenes recall the sectarian bitterness that infused the 30 years of virtual civil war known as the Troubles: night after night of street protests marshaled by balaclava-wearing militants, who have updated their tactics by using social media to rally mobs; death threats to prominent politicians, some of whom have fled their homes and hidden under police guard; firebombs, flagstones and rocks hurled at churches, police cars and lawmakers' offices; protesters joined by rock-throwing boys of 8 and 9; neighborhoods sealed off for hours by the police or protesters' barricades.

Many had hoped that the old hatreds between Northern Ireland's two main groups — the mainly Protestant, pro-British unionists, and the mainly Roman Catholic republicans, with their commitment to a united Ireland — would recede permanently under the auspices of the Good Friday agreement. That accord was reached 15 years ago as a blueprint for the power-sharing government that now rules the province.

But the fragility of those hopes has been powerfully demonstrated by more than 40 days and nights of violence that were triggered by a decision to cut back on the flying of the Union Jack, Britain's red, white and blue national flag, over the grandly pillared, neo-Classical pile City Council building in central Belfast.

By the latest count, more than 100 police officers have been injured, along with dozens of protesters and bystanders. At times, the violence has expanded to other cities, including Londonderry. Business has slumped. Police commanders, their forces overwhelmed, have assigned dozens of officers to scan hundreds of hours of closed-circuit video, looking for ringleaders.

The crisis began modestly enough. The Belfast council, its pro-British members outvoted by a coalition of republicans and a small liberal bloc, decided in early December to limit the flag flying to 18 days a year, as specified by London for all of Britain. Through the decades when the council was dominated by Protestant unionists, committed to links with Britain, the flag flew from the pinnacle of the building every day of the year.

Incongruously, perhaps, most of those 18 days do not represent landmarks in Britain's history — Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, say, or Germany's surrender in the Second World War — but the birthdays of Queen Elizabeth II and her family members, including the former Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, on whose 31st birthday, Jan. 9, the Belfast flag fluttered for the first time since it came down in early December. Under Britain's strict rules about flying the national standard on public and private buildings, not even the Parliament buildings in London fly it on any but government-designated days. But the hauling down of the Belfast flag provoked a furious reaction, the most protracted period of unrest in many years in Northern Ireland.

Among pro-British loyalists, the episode was seen as part of the step-by-step erosion of the British presence, a stripping of what many of them call their identity. Other examples they invoke have also been symbolic, including moves to delete the word Ulster — an ancient designation for the northern Irish provinces commonly used by Protestants but mostly shunned by republicans — from the formal names of the province's police force and its military reservists, and to remove the British crown emblem from the cap and shoulder badges of prison guards and other public officials.

But many of the province's political commentators see the flag dispute as a token of something more profound and ultimately more threatening to the hopes for a permanent peace here.

They say the council's decision on the flag, made possible by the fact that nationalists now hold 24 seats on the council, compared with 21 for the unionists, reflects the rapid growth of the Catholic population in the years since the Good Friday agreement, unsettling the long-held assumption among unionists that Protestants would constitute a permanent majority in the province.

The most recent census results, released last year, showed that 48 percent listed themselves as Protestant or brought up Protestant, down 5 percentage points from the 2001 census, while 45 percent of the population listed themselves as Catholic or brought up Catholic, a 1 percentage point rise. In Belfast, many say, Catholics are already a majority or nearly so and could form a majority across the province within a decade.

Since the Good Friday agreement specified that the province would remain part of Britain as long as a majority of the province's people and of the population of the whole of Ireland wished it to be, the reasoning goes, Protestants who are resolved never to accept a united Ireland could be right in seeing the flag dispute as a harbinger of their worst fears.

Patricia MacBride, a Catholic whose father was killed by loyalist gunmen and who has been a leader in reconciliation efforts under the Good Friday agreement, said she had always feared that the peace process might founder when Protestants realized that the population numbers were moving against them. With the sense that power was shifting away from them, she said, the sense of betrayal among Protestants had intensified.

"There was always going to be something that triggered this upheaval," she said. "Increasingly, they feel abandoned by the state whose agents they have been for so long."

Strong backing for that view was evident on a recent morning in Belfast on Shankill Road, a depressingly run-down loyalist stronghold notorious as a center of sectarian ambushes, bombings and shootings during the Troubles. There the Union Jack was everywhere, atop buildings, in shop windows, in tattoos and in the hands of small children out shopping with their parents. In bars, cafes and shops, "the humiliation" of the flag issue was the center of conversation. In the winter chill, groups of men, mostly unemployed, reinforced one another's indignation.

On a stretch of the road punctuated with memorials to Protestants killed in the Troubles and to Ulstermen who died in World War I, Paul Shaw, 33, owner of the Shankill Band Shop, boasted of doing a roaring trade during the upheaval, selling thousands of flags and other loyalist memorabilia, including DVDs of patriotic songs sung by Ulstermen on the battlefields of the Somme.

"It's our flag, our identity; it's been flown above City Hall every day since 1906, and it's being stripped from us," he said. With nods from others clustered around him, he compared the flag battle to the fighting on the Somme. "If we lose this one, we'll have a united Ireland in 5 or 10 years, and we won't accept it," he said. "We'll die to defend the flag. If we have to, we'll go back to the graveyards and the jails."

With no end in sight, leaders of the power-sharing government have voiced anxiety that the protests, by whipping up antagonism among Protestants, could threaten the peace process. But the top two officials in the power-sharing administration — Peter Robinson, the unionist first minister, and Martin McGuinness, the republican first deputy minister, who is Mr. Robinson's effective coequal — vowed in the province's assembly on Monday that their commitment to the peace agreement would not be shaken. Mr. Robinson was unsparing in his rebuke to the protesters. "You do not respect the union flag if you are using it as a weapon," he said, adding that the protests were "a cynical cover for the real political agenda, which is to destroy the political process."

Mr. McGuinness, a former chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, seemed eager not to draw sectarian comfort from the turmoil in the unionists' political base.

"I do not believe for a moment that they speak for the vast majority of unionists," he said of the flag protesters, dismissing their efforts as a crude challenge to the power-sharing arrangements "from people who do not have a mandate and speak for nobody but themselves."

It was the first time that Te'o, the Notre Dame all-American linebacker, expanded on his side of a story that has gripped the country in recent days. Until Wednesday, the often-retold story was that Te'o's dominant season, in which he led Notre Dame to the B.C.S. national championship game, was inspired by playing through the pain of the early-season deaths of his girlfriend and grandmother.

But Te'o told ESPN in an off-camera interview that "I wasn't faking it."

He said he did not make up the story of a girlfriend who had died to bolster his chances of winning the Heisman Trophy. He finished second to Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel.

When people "hear the facts, they'll know," he told ESPN. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."

ESPN said Te'o was interviewed for two and a half hours while at the IMG Training Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where is preparing for the N.F.L. draft.

Notre Dame, which had stood by him through the aftermath of the hoax, had been pushing Te'o to go public and tell his story. Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, in a podcast released Friday, said he did not fault those who did not believe Te'o or the university's account of events surrounding the hoax. Swarbrick said he understood that those doubts would not be eased until Te'o came forward. He said, "Skepticism was easy to understand."

Swarbrick said that because of their silence, Te'o and his family had "lost the opportunity to, in some ways, control the story."

Before Friday's revelation, Te'o's only statement came on Wednesday evening, when he said he was the target of "what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies," calling it "painful and humiliating."

The same night, Swarbrick held a news conference, saying that even after an investigation, he still had full faith in Te'o.

But through all of Thursday and much of Friday, Te'o remained silent, even as new alleged revelations about his story swirled, including a tale of confession from the supposed mastermind.

Friday morning, ESPN reported that Ronaiah Tuisasosopo phoned a friend from church in early December and admitted to being behind a plan to trick Te'o into believing he was in a relationship with a girl who had died, according to the friend, who was identified only as in her 20s.

The woman told ESPN that Tuisasosopo, who has not come forward publicly, was crying when he made his admission. The story suggested that Te'o did not participate in the hoax.

Tuisasosopo "told me that Manti was not involved at all, he was a victim," ESPN quoted the woman as saying.

As details have trickled out since the Deadspin Web site broke the story Wednesday of the dead girlfriend hoax, Swarbrick said he has continued to stand by Te'o, who reported the situation to the university Dec. 26.

"Everything I have access to right now does nothing to shake my belief in Manti," Swarbrick said, adding that he's "overwhelmed with the cruelty of this."

He continued, "There is just a core cruelty here which is just very sad for me and a terrible statement about where we are today and how social media is a tool in some really bad stuff."

Swarbrick said Te'o and his family had initially planned to come out with the story on their own next week.

"Sometimes the best-laid plans don't quite work," he said.

The alleged assault occurred in a San Francisco hotel room early Sunday, after the 49ers' playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers, police said in a written statement.

Crabtree has been interviewed with his attorney present and has cooperated with the probe, the statement said. The receiver hasn't been detained or arrested, and he agreed to be available for more questions in the future.

The probe is being handled by the department's special victims unit. When the investigation is done, the findings will be forwarded to the district attorney's office, which decides if charges should be filed.

Authorities didn't release any further details.

49ers General Manager Trent Baalke said the team is aware of the allegations.

"The 49ers take such matters very seriously," he said in a statement. "We will have no further comment at this time as the legal process is ongoing."

San Francisco is preparing to play the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC championship game on Sunday. The winner goes to the Super Bowl.

The 49ers said Crabtree made the trip to Atlanta. The team referred all other questions about the matter to Crabtree's attorney, who was not immediately identified.

This season, Crabtree became the first San Francisco wide receiver to log more than 1,000 yards in a season since Terrell Owens in 2003. He had a career-best 1,105 yards receiving, including a single-game high 172 yards on eight receptions in a win over Arizona.

In Saturday's NFC division matchup against the Packers, Crabtree caught two touchdown passes and wound up with nine receptions and 119 yards for the Niners (12-4-1).

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Associated Press Sports Writer Antonio Gonzalez contributed to this report.

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Armstrong, the once defiant cyclist, also became choked up when he discussed how he told his oldest child that the rumors about Armstrong's doping were true.

Even with all that, the interview will most likely be remembered for what it was missing.

Armstrong had not subjected himself to questioning from anyone in the news media since United States antidoping officials laid out their case against him in October. He chose not to appeal their ruling, leaving him with a lifetime ban from Olympic sports.

He personally chose Winfrey for his big reveal, and it went predictably. Winfrey allowed him to share his thoughts and elicited emotions from him, but she consistently failed to ask critical follow-up questions that would have addressed the most vexing aspects of Armstrong's deception.

She did not press him on who helped him dope or cover up his drug use for more than a decade. Nor did she ask him why he chose to take banned performance-enhancing substances even after cancer had threatened his life.

Winfrey also did not push him to answer whether he had admitted to doctors in an Indianapolis hospital in 1996 that he had used performance-enhancing drugs, a confession a former teammate and his wife claimed they overheard that day. To get to the bottom of his deceit, antidoping officials said, Armstrong has to be willing to provide more details.

"He spoke to a talk-show host," David Howman, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said from Montreal on Friday. "I don't think any of it amounted to assistance to the antidoping community, let alone substantial assistance. You bundle it all up and say, 'So what?'

Jeffrey M. Tillotson, the lawyer for an insurance company that unsuccessfully withheld a $5 million bonus from Armstrong on the basis that he had cheated to win the Tour de France in 2004, said his client would make a decision over the weekend about whether to sue Armstrong. If it proceeds, the company, SCA Promotions, will seek $12 million, the total it paid Armstrong in bonuses and legal fees.

"It seemed to us that he was more sorry that he had been caught than for what he had done," Tillotson said. "If he's serious about rehabbing himself, he needs to start making amends to the people he bullied and vilified, and he needs to start paying money back."

Armstrong, who said he once believed himself to be invincible, explained in the portion of the interview broadcast Friday night that he started to take steps toward redemption last month. Then, after dozens of questions had already been lobbed his way, he became emotional when he described how he told his 13-year-old son, Luke, that yes, his father had cheated by doping. That talk happened last month over the holidays, Armstrong said as he fought back tears.

"I said, listen, there's been a lot of questions about your dad, my career, whether I doped or did not dope, and I've always denied, I've always been ruthless and defiant about that, which is probably why you trusted me, which makes it even sicker," Armstrong said he told his son, the oldest of his five children. "I want you to know it's true."

At times, Winfrey's interview seemed more like a therapy session than an inquisition, with Armstrong admitting that he was narcissistic and had been in therapy — and that he should be in therapy regularly because his life was so complicated.

In the end, the interview most likely accomplished what Armstrong had hoped: it was the vehicle through which he admitted to the public that he had cheated by doping, which he had lied about for more than a decade. But his answers were just the first step to clawing back his once stellar reputation.

On Friday, Armstrong appeared more contrite than he had during the part of the interview that was shown Thursday, yet he still insisted that he was clean when he made his comeback to cycling in 2009 after a brief retirement, an assertion the United States Anti-Doping Agency said was untrue. He also implied that his lifetime ban from all Olympic sports was unfair because some of his former teammates who testified about their doping and the doping on Armstrong's teams received only six-month bans.

Richard Pound, the founding chairman of WADA and a member of the International Olympic Committee, said he was unmoved by Armstrong's televised mea culpa.

"If what he's looking for is some kind of reconstruction of his image, instead of providing entertainment with Oprah Winfrey, he's got a long way to go," Pound said Friday from his Montreal office.

Armstrong acknowledged to Winfrey during Friday's broadcast that he has a long way to go before winning back the public's trust. He said he understood why people recently turned on him because they felt angry and betrayed.

"I lied to you and I'm sorry," he said before acknowledging that he might have lost many of his supporters for good. "I am committed to spending as long as I have to to make amends, knowing full well that I won't get very many back."

Armstrong also said that the scandal has cost him $75 million in lost sponsors, all of whom abandoned him last fall after Usada made public 1,000 pages of evidence that Armstrong had doped.

"In a way, I just assumed we would get to that point," he said of his sponsors' leaving. "The story was getting out of control."

In closing her interview, Winfrey asked Armstrong a question that left him perplexed.

"Will you rise again?" she said.

Armstrong said: "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's out there."

Then, as the interview drew to a close, Armstrong said: "The ultimate crime is the betrayal of these people that supported me and believed in me."

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The police in San Francisco said Friday that they were investigating a sexual assault allegation involving 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree.

The reported assault occurred in a city hotel room early Sunday, after the 49ers' playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers, the police said in a written statement.

Crabtree has been interviewed with his lawyer present and has cooperated with the investigation, the statement said. He has not been detained or arrested, and he agreed to be available for more questions.

49ers General Manager Trent Baalke said the team was aware of the allegations. The team said Crabtree made the trip to Atlanta and referred all other questions about the matter to Crabtree's lawyer.

The agency said it canceled a contract, originally worth $40 million, with the maker of the scanners, Rapiscan, after the company failed to meet a Congressional deadline for new software that would protect passengers' privacy. Since going into widespread use nearly three years ago, the scanners have been criticized by passengers for being too invasive and are the subject of lawsuits from privacy groups.

The T.S.A. began deploying the scanners in 2010, after an attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen, to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight by setting off explosives hidden in his underwear. The T.S.A. said that 174 of the machines are currently being used at airport checkpoints around the country. Another 76 are housed at a storage facility in Texas.

Rapiscan will be required to pay for removing the scanners. In a statement, Deepak Chopra, the company's president, said the decision to cancel the contract and remove the scanners was a "a mutually satisfactory agreement with the T.S.A." The company said that scanners would be used at other government agencies.

The removal of the Rapiscan scanners does not mean that all full-body scanners will be removed from airport security checkpoints. A second type of full-body scanner does not produce revealing images. Instead, it makes an avatar-like projection on security screens.

The T.S.A. said those machines, which should be in airports by June, will allow quicker scans than those using X-rays.

"This means faster lanes for the traveler and enhanced security," the agency said.

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, made it clear on Friday that a rapid outcome was unlikely, saying that 787s would not be allowed to fly until the authorities were "1,000 percent sure" they were safe.

"Those planes aren't flying now until we have a chance to examine the batteries," Mr. LaHood told reporters. "That seems to be where the problem is."

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday took the rare step of grounding Boeing's technologically advanced 787s after a plane in Japan made an emergency landing when one of its two lithium-ion batteries set off a smoke alarm in the cockpit. Last week at Boston's Logan Airport, a battery ignited in a parked 787.

The last time the government grounded an entire fleet of airplanes was in 1979, after the crash of a McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

The grounding comes as the United States is going through a record stretch of safe commercial jet flying: It has been nearly four years since a fatal airline crash, with nearly three billion passengers flying in that period. The last airliner crash, near Buffalo, N.Y., came after a quiet period of two and a half years, which suggests a declining crash rate.

Investigators in Japan said Friday that a possible explanation for the problems with the 787's batteries was that they were overcharged — a hazard that has long been a concern for lithium-ion batteries. But how that could have happened to a plane that Boeing says has multiple systems to prevent such an event is still unclear.

Given the uncertainty, it will be hard for federal regulators to approve any corrective measures proposed by Boeing. To lift the grounding order, Boeing must demonstrate that any fix it puts in place would prevent similar episodes from happening.

The government's approach, while prudent, worries industry officials who fear it does not provide a rapid exit for Boeing.

The F.A.A. typically sets a course of corrective action for airlines when it issues a safety directive. But in the case of the 787, the government's order, called an emergency airworthiness directive, required that Boeing demonstrate that the batteries were safe but did not specify how.

While the government and the plane maker are cooperating, there are few precedents for the situation.

"Everyone wants the airplane back in the air quickly and safely," said Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "But I don't believe there will be a corner cut to accomplish that. It will happen when all are confident they have a good solution that will contain a fire or a leak."

Boeing engineers, Mr. Rosenker said, are working around the clock. "I bet they have cots and food for the engineers who are working on this," he said. "They have produced a reliable and safe aircraft and as advanced as it is, they don't want to put airplanes in the air with the problems we have seen."

The government approved Boeing's use of lithium-ion batteries to power some of the plane's systems in 2007, but special conditions were imposed on the plane maker to ensure the batteries would not overheat or ignite. Government inspectors also approved Boeing's testing plans for the batteries and were present when they were performed.

Even so, after the episode in Boston, the federal agency said it would review the 787's design and manufacturing with a focus on the electrical systems and batteries. The agency also said it would review the certification process.

The 787 has more electrical systems than previous generations of airplanes. These systems operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones. To run these systems, the 787 has six generators with a capacity equivalent to the power needed by 400 homes.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey broadcast on Thursday, did Armstrong really admit to using performance-enhancing drugs during his cycling career after denying it for more than a decade? Yes. Did he admit to bullying and trying to destroy people like Andreu and her husband, Frankie, one of Armstrong's former teammates, because they dared to claim he had doped? Yes. But did Armstrong say everything Andreu had wanted to hear? Absolutely not.

"I was hopeful that he would come completely clean," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Dearborn, Mich. "But when I saw the interview, I couldn't freakin' believe it. He was cherry-picking the truth. I really felt like calling him and saying, you are a moron, you had good intentions and you really screwed everything up. You didn't seem believable at all."

Her husband was blunter: "The guy's a professional liar. How are we supposed to believe him?"

Betsy Andreu, a University of Michigan graduate with a quick wit and sharp tongue, has long been considered one of Armstrong's biggest enemies but over the past week has grown to have mixed emotions toward him. She is one of the few people who refused to remain silent over the years about Armstrong's dark secrets of doping. And, like the others who questioned his fairy tale story, she was one of those Armstrong tried to crush.

He has called her obsessed and vindictive. He has tried to blackball her husband from working in cycling. He did all that because the Andreus — who were once inside Armstrong's inner circle — refused to lie about a doping confession they said they heard Armstrong make in 1996 while he was battling cancer. In 2005, Betsy and Frankie Andreu were required to testify in a civil lawsuit about that confession. They said they had heard doctors ask Armstrong if he had ever used performance-enhancing drugs and that Armstrong rattled off: testosterone, EPO, growth hormone, cortisone and steroids. When word of their testimony got out, Armstrong began his attack.

He used his power in cycling to convince people not to hire Frankie Andreu, jeopardizing his ability to make money, the Andreus said. He repeatedly called Betsy Andreu crazy and vindictive, and said she was out to get him because she hated him. In his interview with Winfrey, Armstrong addressed Betsy Andreu directly, saying, with a smirk, "I called you crazy, I called you a bitch, I called you all those things, but I never called you fat."

The seemingly insensitive comment sparked hundreds of negative comments on Twitter about Armstrong, but the Andreus said they knew Armstrong was just trying to add levity to the stressful situation.

Just two weeks before, they never would have given Armstrong that benefit of the doubt. When asked then if they would ever forgive him for what he had done to their family, Betsy Andreu answered quickly: never.

"Would you forgive Bernie Madoff?" she said, adding that if Armstrong went to prison for his transgressions, she would not shed a tear. "I know as a Christian I'm supposed to forgive, but I'm not sure if I could do that," she said. "Lance tried to decimate this family, and I don't think I can get past that."

This week, though, before the two-part Winfrey interview aired the Andreus received a phone call from Armstrong, who offered an apology. Frankie Andreu spoke to him for 10 minutes, and said that Armstrong "sounded sincere," but that he still did not trust him. Betsy Andreu talked to him for 40 minutes, but wouldn't divulge the content of their conversation. But she did soften toward him somewhat.

"It was a flood of emotions because were good friends once, and we used to have so much fun," she said. "But you know he has done so much bad to us. He put us through so much hell."

The indictment detailed a wide-ranging scheme of kickbacks and pay-for-play of a kind not entirely unfamiliar in Louisiana history. Contractors and vendors looking for work with the city would provide the mayor with vacations, big checks and even free granite for his family business. In exchange, they would be awarded lucrative contracts with the city, assistance in defusing community opposition to their projects and even forgiveness of tax penalties.

While federal prosecutors have convicted a Louisiana governor, a congressman, a city councilman and members of the school board in the past 15 years alone, this is the first time in New Orleans history that a mayor has been indicted on corruption charges.

Mr. Nagin's lawyer, Robert Jenkins, did not return a call seeking comment. However, he called a local radio talk show in the afternoon, and in response to a question from the host, John (Spud) McConnell, suggested that the indictment had come as a surprise amid continuing plea negotiations.

"Well, we were surprised that the indictment came today because we were still talking with the government and in fact we had talked about meeting next week as well," he said.

But it came as no surprise here in the city, where people had been expecting an indictment for months. Aside from someone identified only as "Businessman A," the other figures alleged to have taken part in the conspiracy have either been convicted or pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption charges in the past three years.

Even the timing was not a shock, as one of the contractors pleaded guilty in December to paying a $60,000 bribe to "Public Official A" on Jan. 30, 2008, which set off a five-year statute of limitations that would have come to a close this month.

While Mr. Nagin, 56, had not been officially named as a target of a federal grand jury, the pretense that Public Official A, who showed up in another plea, could be anyone but the mayor had long since been abandoned on local news reports and in conversations around town.

A lawyer for one of the contractors suggested to reporters last month that a person would have to be "the worst investigative reporter on the planet" to not know who Public Official A was.

"This has long been a topic of conversation among the political class," said Edward E. Chervenak, a professor of political science at the University of New Orleans. "When are the feds going to indict Nagin? Everybody's been waiting for the shoe to fall."

Mr. Nagin came into office in 2002 as an outsider, a reformer out to clean City Hall, a business executive who disdained the old machine politics and was spouting new ideas. It did not take long for him to develop a reputation as a man whose thoughts far outpaced his actions, with ambitious proposals often going nowhere.

"It was really a signature problem in his early administration," said Stephanie Grace, a former columnist for The Times-Picayune who covered his entire career as mayor. "It wasn't corruption. It was just things just not happening."

While the inability to act was an unfortunate if tolerable trait in a mayor during normal times, it took on tragic dimensions after Hurricane Katrina, when the very existence of the city was in doubt. New Orleanians scattered around the country looked to the mayor for direction on how the city would rebuild and, while Mr. Nagin frequently offered colorful commentary on the frustrations of recovery, he gave little guidance even on crucial issues.

"He basically made this decision not to decide," Ms. Grace said.

Still, though billions of dollars in federal money were coming into New Orleans after Katrina, few initially thought of the mayor as corrupt.

Not until a series of investigative reports in The Times-Picayune and, in 2010, the guilty plea of Mr. Nagin's chief technology officer, did that conception start changing. According to the indictment, F.B.I. agents had interviewed Mr. Nagin about kickbacks as far back as 2009.

The indictment alleges that the mayor began a kickback scheme in June 2004, with an executive order allowing Greg Meffert, the technology officer, to engage a city vendor in a no-bid contract.

The report, compiled from information collected from victims and other witnesses who called a hot line run by the church from 2010 until the end of last year, includes the ages of the victims, the locations of the assaults and the repercussions they have suffered since. The accounts were provided in 8,500 calls to the hot line; they are not representative of abuse cases over all and cannot be individually verified. The church said the report contained information from 1,824 people, of whom 1,165 described themselves as victims.

Germany's bishops have vowed a thorough and impartial investigation into the abuse. Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, who is looking into abuse cases for the German Bishops' Conference, told reporters after the report was released on Thursday that it served as an example of that intention.

"I found particularly devastating the perpetrators' lies to their under-aged victims that their actions were an expression of a loving bond with God," he said Thursday. Claudia Adams, who said she was assaulted as a child in a preschool run by the church in a village near Trier, works through her trauma by blogging about the abuse scandal. The priest who abused her "told me that I was now 'closer to God,' " she said in a telephone interview on Friday from her home near Trier.

The church's credibility regarding its commitment to an impartial investigation suffered a fresh blow last week when the bishops canceled an independent study into the abuse scandal amid allegations by the independent investigator, Christian Pfeiffer, that the church was censoring information.

The church insists that it remains committed to carrying out the independent study once a new investigator can be found. Even if the church should produce a report, observers note that it will be a challenge to undo the damage caused by Mr. Pfeiffer's allegations. "It's not even about the damage to their image so much as it is to their trustworthiness," said Andreas Holzem, a professor of church history at Tübingen University.

Many of the victims said their call to the hot line was the first time they had told anyone about assaults that took place decades ago, most between 1950 and 1980, the report said. Many callers broke down in the middle of their stories and, overcome by emotion, simply hung up the phone, it said. Those who told their stories painted a picture of priests who preyed on emotionally vulnerable children, building up their trust and then assaulting them, repeatedly, over a period of several years.

The reported assaults were clustered largely in the country's heavily Roman Catholic regions along the Rhine River to the west and throughout the south, including Pope Benedict XVI's home state, Bavaria.

Germans were further outraged by reports this week that two Roman Catholic hospitals in Cologne had refused to carry out a gynecological examination on a 25-year-old suspected rape victim. An emergency doctor who had helped the woman told the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that the hospitals cited ethical objections to advise women on unwanted pregnancies and on steps that can be taken to prevent them, like the morning-after pill. The Archdiocese of Cologne denied that the church refuses to treat rape victims. The hospitals blamed a "misunderstanding" and said the matter was under investigation.