“There is no plausible evidence that Catholic priests are gangs of sexual predators, as they are being portrayed"
http://blogs.denverpost.com/hark/2010/05/25/scandal-creates-contempt-for-catholic-clergy/39/
"A steady stream of revelations and civil lawsuits over child sexual abuse by priests seem to signal the Catholic Church has the biggest problem with clerical scandals, but experts deny it is a hot zone of exploitation.
Insurance companies, child advocacy groups and religion scholars say there is no evidence that Catholic clergy are more likely to be involved in sexual misconduct than other clergy or professionals. Yet ongoing civil litigation of decades-old cases against a church with deep pockets keeps the Catholic Church in the headlines.
“There is no plausible evidence that Catholic priests are gangs of sexual predators, as they are being portrayed,” said Pennsylvania State University Prof. Philip Jenkins, eminent religion and history scholar, and a non-Catholic who’s studied the church’s abuse problems for 20 years .
Jenkins said there has been no formal study comparing denominations for rates of child abuse. However, insurers have been assessing the risks since they began offering riders on liability policies in the 1980s. Two of the largest insurers report no higher risks in covering Catholic churches than Protestant denominations.
Wisconsin-based Church Mutual Insurance Co. has 100,000 client churches and has seen a steady filing of about five sexual molestation cases a week for more than a decade, even though its client base has grown.
“It would be incorrect to call it a Catholic problem, ” said Church Mutual’s risk control manager, Rick Schaber. “We do not see one denomination above another. It’s equal. It’s also equal among large metropolitan churches and small rural churches.”
Iowa-based Guide One Center for Risk Management, which insures more than 40,000 congregations, also said Catholic churches are not considered a greater risk or charged higher premiums.
“Our claims experience shows this happens evenly across denominations,” said spokeswoman Melanie Stonewall.
However, the largest insurer of the Catholic Church was silent on the subject.
Midwestern Catholic dioceses formed their own Nebraska-based nonprofit insurance group in 1896, now called the Catholic Mutual Group, which is the provider to 111 out of 195 U.S. Catholic dioceses. Catholic Mutual’s counsel, Tim Augustine, declined comment on sexual-abuse claims.
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children President Ernie Allen said his organization has received more than 825,000 reports of child abuse and does not see any statistical indication the Catholic Church has a greater prevalence of cases than any other setting — after accounting for the size of the church, the largest Christian denomination in the U.S. and the world.
“There is a common denominator among those who abuse children,” Allen said. “They seek out situations where they have easy access and cover. It should surprise nobody that an abuser is a teacher, coach, youth leader, pediatrician, minister, priest or rabbi.”
The Boy Scouts of America was recently ordered to pay $18.5 million to a former scout abused by an assistant scoutmaster in 1983, in a case that highlighted the Boy Scout organization’s secret files on suspected child molesters . In the 1980s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the charter holder for an estimated one-third to one-half of the nation’s Boy Scout troops , according to CBS News.
Researchers and journalists examining the sexual and physical abuse by American public schoolteachers have found “a horrendous volume of cases,” Jenkins said, and nobody has paid the sort of attention to it that the Catholic Church has experienced since the late 1990s.
The Catholic Church has a particularly extensive network of schools and youth ministries, and Allen’s organization had been sharply critical in the past of the way it and other churches handled suspected abuse.
“Churches need to see that it’s not just a sin, it’s a crime,” Allen said. “I understand churches put great stock in redemption, but first and foremost they need to hold that person accountable.”
Allen said he has been pleased with the commitment of the Catholic Church in America to deal aggressively with the problem in the past several years.
The only comprehensive report on sexual abuse within any denomination was the study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of American Catholic priests . No comparable report exists for any other denomination, Jenkins said.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned the study after sexual molestation cases rocked the church in 2002, yet the study, made by a college at City University of New York, is considered a rigorous independent review.
John Jay researchers found more than 4 percent of 110,000 priests active between 1950 and 2002 had faced accusations of sexual misconduct. There were 4,392 complaints, ranging from improper conversations to rape, filed by 10,667 victims under the age of 18.
However, child molestation is an under-reported crime, researchers said. They estimate sexual abuse among the general U.S. adult male population to be 10 percent to 20 percent.
The study also found that more abusive acts by priests occurred in the 1970s and 1980s than any other decades, yet one-third of all allegations, many of them decades old, were reported in 2002-03.
More than half of the offending priests in the John Jay study faced only one accusation. And 149 priests were serial offenders, responsible for 25,000 alleged incidents, more than a quarter of the total, and many of the cases involving very young children.
Yet despite a persistent label of “pedophile priest scandal,” Jenkins said, very few of the accused priests were pedophiles, those having abusing children before they reach the age of puberty, about 12 or 13. This in no way makes the acts more defensible, he said, but it demonstrates distorted public perceptions.
At the end of 2009, Baylor University released a national study of clergy sexual misconduct with adults that concluded it was more common than previously thought and it occurred across all religions and denominations.
Yet many critics suspect the church’s celibacy requirement, exclusion of women from the priesthood and ancient hierarchical structure are factors in its clerical scandals.
The Catholic Church has been forced to scrutinize itself more than any other denomination and it suffers for its better record-keeping … and unique (hierarchical) structure,” Jenkins said.
Even the staunchest Catholics have been appalled by the church’s cover-up of sexual abuse cases and steps taken by many church officials to protect fraternity, image and coffers over Catholic youth.
“They were stupid,” said Jesuit priest Thomas J. Reese, Senior Fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “The Catholic Church needs to apologize, apologize, apologize. There was no excuse for keeping those guys in ministry.”
Attitudes about child molestation have changed enormously over time, Jenkins said.
“No one looks at whether the attitudes of secular professionals in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were any less wrong than the church’s,” Jenkins said. “Commonplace therapeutic views until the 1970s were that pedophiles were curable and unlikely to repeat if removed from the setting. A dominant theme of the 1960s was that there was no significant damage to children in these cases.”
The Catholic Church is the only institution being scrutinized by the standards of today for decisions made 30 years ago, Jenkins said.
Yet many within the church, which holds itself up as a leading moral authority, say officials should have known better than to continually move offending priests from parish to parish.
“We will never understand it. The church knew it wasn’t right, yet so many things were swept under the rug,” said Mark Ross, a 73-year-old Thornton Catholic who spent decades in lay ministries. “Many people didn’t know it was happening. Others refused to believe it — it was too shameful. It breaks my heart. I feel sorry for the good priests, and there are so many of them.”
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Notwithstanding the media hysteria over sex abuse in the Catholic Church, priests abuse at a rate far lower than that of other males. While even one case of abuse is too many, approximately only 4% of all active priests between 1950 and 2002 were even accused of abuse – a rate far lower than that of other males in the general population.
Newsweek magazine, April 7, 2010 :
USA Today, June 6, 2010 :
Sexual abuse of minors is not the province of the Catholic Church alone. About 4 percent of priests committed an act of sexual abuse on a minor between 1950 and 2002, according to a study being conducted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. That is roughly consistent with data on many similar professions.
An extensive 2007 investigation by the Associated Press showed that sexual abuse of children in U.S. schools was "widespread," and most of it was never reported or punished. And in Portland, Ore., last week, a jury reached a $1.4 million verdict against the Boy Scouts of America in a trial that showed that since the 1920s, Scouts officials kept "perversion files" on suspected abusers but kept them secret.
"We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else ," Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told Newsweek. "I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others."
Part of the issue is that the Catholic Church is so tightly organized and keeps such meticulous records -- many of which have come to light voluntarily or through court orders -- that it can yield a fairly reliable portrait of its personnel and abuse over the decades. Other institutions, and most other religions, are more decentralized and harder to analyze or prosecute.
Badfish, Comment removed for CoC violation [ph]
More excuses for scumbag pedophiles in the church.
It is not an excuse Kavika, it is an acknowledgement that anti-Catholics have misused this scandal for other purposes. There is expert opinion that the instances of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church are no more than in the society in general.
There is nothing in priests that made or make them more prone to this activity than any other subset of men who have had unsupervised access to children.
Badfish has repeatedly alleged that Catholic priests are uniquely guilty of this activity when it is not true. Enough is enough. This is a holy day for Catholics and all Christians and people should have the decency to acknowledge it as such.
Here is a fact for you JR....These are priests, the duty was to protect children. And it was the Bishops and Cardinals to insure that...None of them protected, they hide it...
I don't give a damn about their average against others in society. It was their sworn duty, and they failed as did those that protected them. It's that simple.
Kavika, it is everyone;'s duty to protect children. It is the schoolteacher's duty, it is the camp counselors duty, it is the coaches duty, it is the scout leaders duty, it is the uncles duty, and it is the father's duty.
An OVERWHELMING percentage of child sexual abuse took place and takes place outside of the Catholic Church. To pretend that Catholic priests were the main perpetrators of this activity is preposterous.
I didn't say that priests were the main predators. What I said was that they have a sacred duty to protect children as did those that covered for them. They didn't do it.
That is a fact JR.
Badfish chose a holy day of Christianity and Catholicism to being this up again, and I have had it with the asshole.
JR,
the INSTITUTION of the catholic church covered up for these pedophiles. What is even worse is that they REASSIGNED them to other areas so they could continue their sick obsessions and the church knew it.
I feel the catholic people as a whole are just now coming out of the closet with regard to acknowledging what happened over the decades in modern time, the centuries over the elder times. A lot of them absolutely cannot face the truth because to do so would break their heart wondering if that time their own children quietly withdrew from the family, or started to "go bad" was because they, as parents, missed the signs.
I have said this before on other threads... I lived in Boston over ten years, New Hampshire for two, and had friends who loathed the church and hated their own parents, hadn't spoken to them since they left home at a young age.... because when they tried to tell their parents they were being molested by the priest in their church, the mothers knocked them across the room, screamed at them how could they speak so of a holy man of G_d, told them the devil had taken over their mind, and dragged them to the same priest that fondled and raped them so he could "pray" with them to expell the demons in them.
When one of them became pregnant by a priest at the age of thirteen, she was completely shunned by her family, sent to a catholic unwed mother's institution to give birth where the baby was taken without her even knowing the gender and adopted out to a good catholic family, sent back home to her parents where the father beat her to give up the name of the "real" bastard who put a kid in her belly... beat her so bad he caused permanent internal injury so that she could never conceive again, by the way, then sent to a catholic hospital for treatment....
a merry-go-round of catholic pedophilia taken care of by the catholic institution, with priests protected by even the faithful. Too bad we don't have statistics of how many children were born to the vatican who should be supporting them for life.
These parents must be writhing in guilt and shame for not believing their children... how many right now with all this coming out over the last decade or so are slowly going mad with the inabililty to even question their children for fear of the answers?
That is the fault of the institution of the church. Ever notice how people say, "The Christians and the catholics... " when referring to Christianity as a religion? Get a clue, ask the audience, phone a friend.
Kavika,
The Catholic Church is more likely to be accused and sued because:
All child abuse by adults is horrible and deplorable...not to mention the long lasting effects it has on the victims.
Just saying...
Charlie
Charlie, you forgot to add number 4...Because they did it and are guilty.
There is an article on the front page re the Seattle Diocese that just settled for 9.1 million. The proof is there and it was devastating.
Charlie, you forgot to add number 4...Because they did it and are guilty.
And have been doing it for centuries. They invented the "Indian schools" where they raped and tortured Indian children, then MURDERED them if they became too troublesome.. like, as in, pregnant.
They just raped the boys until they became too old to be desirable then sent them on home to the reservations broken in mind and spirit, to become fathers who carried such shame and guilt they couldn't function as good fathers.
Then they tell Indians to "get over it" without even knowing what "it" is. Fucking bastards.
No, it's because the church as an institution hid it and RELOCATED THE FUCKING PEDOPHILES TO PROTECT THEM!
Other denominations aren't protected by a church that is its own fucking STATE with the right to deny records and files. They are punished by the law when their pastors are caught.
This kind of horridness happens in all faiths, and with all people. It has been focused on the Catholic church, because they were a more easy target, I think-- their crimes were "officially" covered up by a vast world-wide organization. While I deplore the Catholic church's cover-up, let all people of all faiths be aware that it can happen to them, in their place of worship, with their pastor/minister/leader. It's all about power, and the church, to me, is all about the wielding of such power, in God's name. Such a crime is heinous.
Dowser,
It does happen in all faiths... but other faiths had to answer to the law of the United States of America. They had no Baptist State, or Methodist State, or Church of Christ State, etc. for the guilty to run to and be protected from their actions.
Which is why the catholic institution is always in the news. They protect their pedophiles, knew what was going on and merely relocated them.
That is what is so evil and disgusting.
Well, I agree. But, in reality, no one in the Methodist church has had to face the music that I know of. It is often 'swept under the rug', in other faiths, too. Our bishops just move 'em on, too. It isn't something that is talked about, but it happens. (The Methodist church is organized perfectly to move 'em on-- we change ministers frequently, as we have a tradition of circuit riders, spreading the word.)
I think that the Catholic church has a hierarchy, certainly one that is highly visible, that both protected the bad ones, paid off victims, and has been a huge target of a lot of well-deserved anger. The Church presents itself as infallible-- and it's not. It is sometimes a blow to us, as people of faith, when our church is shown to be just made of humans.
Any man-made organization, and all churches certainly are 'man-made', is going to have problems, because humans are, by nature, problematic. I can think of thousands of things that I don't "hold with", that the churches take a stand on-- presenting their viewpoint as "the word of God". Is it?
How can any of us, as humans, understand what the real word of God is? How could we possibly hope to read God's mind? I don't think we can. I think all of us just have to do the best we can. Certain things go against the grain of humanity, and harming children is one of them.
(I'm having a cliche day... I can't seem to speak in anything other than cliches...) BUT, I do feel that this issue is church/political issue, (meaning that the politics of the church determine what is done), that hasn't been talked about enough, in faiths other than the Catholic faith. We ALL need to have this dialogue, and we all need to step up the protection of children. Our church leaders are not infallible-- it's primarily based on who is best at playing politics.
So, yes, I agree, but there is more to it than that...
As I have shown repeatedly on this thread, child sex abuse by catholic priests is and has been a drop in the bucket of the total child sex abuse. There are at least 100,000 cases of child sex abuse in the US every year, and those are the reported cases engaged by law enforcement agencies. Who knows how many go unreported? Catholic priests are a microscopic portion of this total.
We know a lot go unreported as a result of the hush money the church pays out to keep these crimes unreported.
They've secretly paid millions in hush money to hide their crimes. Nobody knows how many have been abused by the church worldwide. Even top members approve of the payment of this hush money.
"Experts disagree on the rate of sexual abuse among the general American male population, but Allen says a conservative estimate is one in 10. Margaret Leland Smith, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says her review of the numbers indicates it's closer to one in 5. But in either case, the rate of abuse by Catholic priests is not higher than these national estimates. The public also doesn't realize how "profoundly prevalent" child sexual abuse is, adds Smith. Even those numbers may be low; research suggests that only a third of abuse cases are ever reported (making it the most underreported crime). "However you slice it, it's a very common experience," Smith says.
Most child abusers have one thing in common, and it's not piety—it's preexisting relationships with their victims. That includes priests and ministers and rabbis, of course, but also family members, friends, neighbors, teachers, coaches, scout leaders, youth-group volunteers, and doctors. According to federal studies, three quarters of abuse occurs at the hands of family members or others in the victim's "circle of trust." "The fundamental premise here is that those who abuse children overwhelmingly seek out situations where they have easy and legitimate access to children," he said. "These kinds of positions offer a kind of cover for these offenders.""
There is no evidence that Catholic priests have been child sex abusers at a rate higher than any other subset of men in society that have had access to children.
There is no evidence that Catholic priests have been child sex abusers at a rate higher than any other subset of men in society that have had access to children.
REPEAT, JOHN.....
other "subset of men in society" are readily and easily punished by the law of the land based on evidence.
Not so the catholic priests who are protected by the church, recalled to the vatican when the water gets too hot, and RELOCATED TO DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.
DON'T COVER IT UP, DON'T PROTECT IT, AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE HOLY SPIRITS DON'T SEND THEM OFF TO DO IT AGAIN!
And hey, you, former and current and future popes.... STFU asking that these pedophiles be "forgiven." It makes you look like a pedophile who just managed to get away with it thus your sympathy for the fuckers!
Dean,
that's why I say anyone involved in relocating a pedophile knowing the accusations against them, should be tried and sentenced to mandatory prison, whether it's catholic officials or members of the teacher's union, or as in the case last year of a police chief.
He was "allowed to resign" and get a job in another city where he became the police chief and leader of the Boy Scout troop in that area where he molested children over the years. When he was caught it was discovered his previous town.... from the mayor to the entire city council... allowed him to resign and move on to do it again, after they discovered his crime in that city.
Every fucking one involved in his cover up should be spending time in prison along with him. He is white, by the way...
84% of sexual victimization of children under age 12 occurs in a residence.
Most child sexual abusers are men, and may be respected members of the community drawn to settings where they gain easy access to children like schools, clubs and churches. They come from all age groups, races, religions and socioeconomic classes.
Most victims know and trust their abusers. It isn’t strangers our children have to fear most..
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 21% of all paroled sex offenders in Texas reside in Harris County..
When, Where and How does child sexual abuse happen?
FACT: Many perpetrators "groom" victims and their families.
FACT: Child sexual abuse often takes place under specific, often surprising circumstances. It is helpful to know these circumstances because it allows for the development of strategies to avoid child sexual abuse.
There were 65,000 cases of child abuse in Texas last year.
There were 46,000 cases of child sexual abuse in Texas last year.
In other words, there were 4 times as many child sexual abuse cases in Texas, last year, than there were in 50 years in the Catholic Church.
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Child Abuse in Texas
Our Impact
A children’s advocacy center is the ONE non-profit to serve as the first stop for children entering the justice system because of suspected sexual abuse, severe physical abuse, and those who have witnessed a violent crime. Last year, almost 40,000 children received critical services at a Texas children’s advocacy center.
The network of 69 Texas CACs now officially serves 188 counties where 97% of the Texas population resides. Each year, courtesy services are provided to children in all remaining Texas counties, 33 states and one country.
Of the total number of children served by a CAC last year:
How to Help
Child sexual abuse is a crime of secrecy which, tragically, breeds within our communities because it’s difficult to talk about. That’s why conversation—openly discussing this issue—is the most effective tool we have to eradicate child abuse.
- See more at:
there were 4 times as many child sexual abuse cases in Texas, last year, than there were in 50 years in the Catholic Church.
But are the two necessarily mutually exclusive?