Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't see the numbers. First of all, your 9.8% includes unwanted contact from other students. Specifically, it says:

Responses from students who indicated they had experienced one of the listed behaviors were analyzed using descriptive statistics and frequencies. This analysis (Shakeshaft, 2003) indicates that 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report contact and/or noncontact educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted. 8.7 percent
report only noncontact sexual misconduct and 6.7 percent experienced only contact misconduct. (These total to more than 9.6 percent because some students reported both types of misconduct.) Of students who experienced any kind of sexual misconduct in schools, 21 percent were targets of educators, while the remaining 79 percent were targets of other students.

So the 9.6% is already down to 2% when you get to adults.

And what is included includes a great amount of non-contact sexual misconduct. I don't know if your 10x multiplier is sufficient to go from actual abuse claims to every unwanted comment over a 60 year period of time.

Second, you are comparing contact of priests in a parish with that of educators, who are with the children, away from their parents, every weekday for nine months of the year. The only time I had alone with priests in 11 years of Catholic school was as an altar boy and during confession. After that, it was pretty much masses, benediction, and school assemblies / occasional classroom visits. And that was for someone in Catholic school.

I am inclined to believe data that suggests that other institutions may have a similar problem, but I don't think this data makes the case at all. More importantly, the idea that we are only as bad as other institutions is a losing argument. I find no comfort in the idea that the Church is in the XXth percentile on depravity. The numbers are large enough to stand on their own. Furthermore, I can't imagine the reaction if school districts systematically covered up abuse in their ranks, hired lawyers, moved teachers around. A school fires them and sends the police after them. This is what makes the Catholic church abuse scandal so especially bad. People would be willing to accept that there are bad apples. They don't want to hear that the farmer is still selling them at the market.

Look again. The number I used refers to educator misconduct, not all misconduct.

10x is conservative and is taken from other studies of abuse reporting. The sex abuse scandal represents the best reporting environment that has ever existed for a class of offenders. It's very likely that a higher percentage of offenses by priests have been reported than for any other group.

The DOE study suggested that school districts DID cover up. Remember the 1994 study of 225 NYC educators accused - none were reported to police, only one lost his license. That wasn't the 50s or 60s, either. We live in a period of high consciousness of abuse, more conscientious reporting and the development of best practices for prevention. This was not the case even twenty years ago, and it was certainly not the case when I was a child.

Thank you for pointing out that priests have relatively little contact with children; when you add the education required, demanding schedules, and housing that is usually none too private, it's not the most obvious career choice for a pedophile.

I am *not* making, nor would I ever make, the argument that lower incidence is somehow okay, or that any number of offenses is trivial or meaningless. That's a disgusting accusation not borne out by anything I've said. I'm an abuse survivor and do not take any of it lightly. Sexual abuse of children has been and is and will continue to be an issue in families, neighborhoods, schools, rec centers, sports teams, churches of all denominations - any setting where children are in contact with teenagers and adults.

The one and only thing I am taking issue with is the impressive smearing of Catholic priests as unusually oriented to or guilty of sexual offenses against children when the numbers do not seem to bear out this perception. I take issue with this not because of any great love for the Church, but because it's morally wrong to smear the many who are innocent and it's also godawful stupid to create a bogeyman who makes others seem safe by comparison, especially if those others are, in fact, offending at higher rates than your bogeyman.

No, it doesn't. I quoted verbatim the study you gave me. The total abuse rate was 80% caused by other students.

I'm not sure what your point is about the priests and student contact. Regardless of how plausible you find it as a career for a pedophile, nonetheless, there they are.

I think you misunderstand this as a sparring contest over the relative goodness of the Church vs. other institutions. I am a lifelong Catholic. I had the nuns for grade school, the Jesuits for high school, and a fairly large dose of the Opus Dei to boot. I never had a priest who did anything wrong to me.

This isn't about sticking up for our faith. This is about being honest about the state of our religious institutions. Right now my kids do not go to Catholic church because my wife won't have it. A generation ago, she would have been like my father, who converted in order to raise the kids in my mother's religion. We are killing ourselves by giving the world every reason to believe that we are not taking it seriously enough. Every time someone hears the defense "we are just as bad as anyone else", it fails for three reasons:

1. Sometimes it's just not true. I took the study you gave me and read it, and the data plainly did not say it. We may have the same problem as other religious institutions, but we do not appear to have the same rate of adult abuse as schools from the study you gave me.
2. No one feels comforted by knowing that 2% or 9% or 3% abuse, regardless of how it ranks with other venues for abuse. For many people, that is just too high a penalty to pay for going to Church.
3. The clerical abuse scandal is first and foremost an issue of the Church's response to abuse, not the abuse itself. Schools call the police when a teacher abuses a child. They do not hide them, move them around, and use their lawyers to defend them. It is this dark legacy of hiding the problem that is our burden. The way to erase the dark legacy is not to argue about how it wasn't THAT bad. The way to erase the legacy is to show the commitment to change. If in the next decade, priests are turned over to the police for prosecution and this decisive action is demonstrated publicly, the public will respond in kind.

Anonymous wrote:

I don't see the numbers. First of all, your 9.8% includes unwanted contact from other students. Specifically, it says:

Responses from students who indicated they had experienced one of the listed behaviors were analyzed using descriptive statistics and frequencies. This analysis (Shakeshaft, 2003) indicates that 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report contact and/or noncontact educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted. 8.7 percent
report only noncontact sexual misconduct and 6.7 percent experienced only contact misconduct. (These total to more than 9.6 percent because some students reported both types of misconduct.) Of students who experienced any kind of sexual misconduct in schools, 21 percent were targets of educators, while the remaining 79 percent were targets of other students.

So the 9.6% is already down to 2% when you get to adults.

And what is included includes a great amount of non-contact sexual misconduct. I don't know if your 10x multiplier is sufficient to go from actual abuse claims to every unwanted comment over a 60 year period of time.

Second, you are comparing contact of priests in a parish with that of educators, who are with the children, away from their parents, every weekday for nine months of the year. The only time I had alone with priests in 11 years of Catholic school was as an altar boy and during confession. After that, it was pretty much masses, benediction, and school assemblies / occasional classroom visits. And that was for someone in Catholic school.

I am inclined to believe data that suggests that other institutions may have a similar problem, but I don't think this data makes the case at all. More importantly, the idea that we are only as bad as other institutions is a losing argument. I find no comfort in the idea that the Church is in the XXth percentile on depravity. The numbers are large enough to stand on their own. Furthermore, I can't imagine the reaction if school districts systematically covered up abuse in their ranks, hired lawyers, moved teachers around. A school fires them and sends the police after them. This is what makes the Catholic church abuse scandal so especially bad. People would be willing to accept that there are bad apples. They don't want to hear that the farmer is still selling them at the market.

Look again. The number I used refers to educator misconduct, not all misconduct.

10x is conservative and is taken from other studies of abuse reporting. The sex abuse scandal represents the best reporting environment that has ever existed for a class of offenders. It's very likely that a higher percentage of offenses by priests have been reported than for any other group.

The DOE study suggested that school districts DID cover up. Remember the 1994 study of 225 NYC educators accused - none were reported to police, only one lost his license. That wasn't the 50s or 60s, either. We live in a period of high consciousness of abuse, more conscientious reporting and the development of best practices for prevention. This was not the case even twenty years ago, and it was certainly not the case when I was a child.

Thank you for pointing out that priests have relatively little contact with children; when you add the education required, demanding schedules, and housing that is usually none too private, it's not the most obvious career choice for a pedophile.

I am *not* making, nor would I ever make, the argument that lower incidence is somehow okay, or that any number of offenses is trivial or meaningless. That's a disgusting accusation not borne out by anything I've said. I'm an abuse survivor and do not take any of it lightly. Sexual abuse of children has been and is and will continue to be an issue in families, neighborhoods, schools, rec centers, sports teams, churches of all denominations - any setting where children are in contact with teenagers and adults.

The one and only thing I am taking issue with is the impressive smearing of Catholic priests as unusually oriented to or guilty of sexual offenses against children when the numbers do not seem to bear out this perception. I take issue with this not because of any great love for the Church, but because it's morally wrong to smear the many who are innocent and it's also godawful stupid to create a bogeyman who makes others seem safe by comparison, especially if those others are, in fact, offending at higher rates than your bogeyman.

pp misses the point. What awesome gall only a 110,000 cases a meaningless trival sum??? Your apologies and rationalizations are a sickening justification of a morally bankrupt church's actions
The church hiarchy didn't not treat the pedophile priests as criminals. Their crimes were not reported when discovered, instead a retreat or just reassignment to a new parish was the church's idea of morality and justice, not protection of our children.
Be it .005% or 10% offenders, Bishops, Cardinals & Rome did not regard/report the priests as the criminals they are. I'm sure your private school upon discovery reported the case to the authorities, they did not transfer the offender to a different school. The church, world wide, continues to avoid the criminal reality these rogues continue to inflict on children throught out the world. The church should stay away from women's bodies, children and politics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rate of offending among priests is shaking out at roughly 2.5%. The last ten years were the best reporting environment that's ever existed to root out a group of offenders.

The rate in public school is higher.

Really, cite please. I don't recall one in 30 teachers turning out to be pedophiles.

6.7% of students reported unwanted contact, 9.6% other forms of sexual misconduct, inclusive:

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf

The author of the report has repeatedly stated that public school abuse is much more prevalent than abuse by priests.

The report also includes a 1994 study that found that of 225 teachers identified for sexual misconduct in NYPS, NONE were reported to police and only one lost his license.

I'm trying to wade through this thing but I'm not finding statements bout prevalence vs catholic church, and your numbers compare percentage of catholic offenders to student victims so they are not comparable statistics. Can you point me to the relevant section of the study that you think makes the case?

Google the author's name for her statements.

Slightly fewer than 11,000 allegations were made in the US covering the period 1950-2002. If you multiply that by ten to cover the usual reporting rate for sexual abuse cases, that's 110,000 victims since 1950. That may be high, since the last decade and a half has brought high social support for victims and significant civil awards, which is an ideal environment for reporting.

In contrast, there are 77 million Catholics in the US, almost all of whom would have had significant contact with priests throughout childhood. To be even more conservative, Catholic school enrollment forty years ago, during the peak years of the allegations, was 5 million. So let's take ALL of the 10x estimate for allegations during the entire 52-year period and express it as a percentage of the Catholic school enrollment for one year in the 60s.

It's 2.2%.

Do you see what I'm getting at? The perception of abuse is very high, because so many allegations were made at once, but those allegations covered more than fifty years. The real issue isn't a high prevalence of offending, but the institutional coverups and opportunities to re-offend.

But - 225/0. Coverups were obviously not just a church issue. My private school fired a hebephile rather than deal with the scandal, and he went on to teach elsewhere. And frankly, if you want access to children, the priesthood is by far the most demanding and difficult way to get it. You can get hired at the neighborhood rec center with a high school diploma, and they're not that picky.

I don't see the numbers. First of all, your 9.8% includes unwanted contact from other students. Specifically, it says:

Responses from students who indicated they had experienced one of the listed behaviors were analyzed using descriptive statistics and frequencies. This analysis (Shakeshaft, 2003) indicates that 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report contact and/or noncontact educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted. 8.7 percent
17
report only noncontact sexual misconduct and 6.7 percent experienced only contact misconduct. (These total to more than 9.6 percent because some students reported both types of misconduct.) Of students who experienced any kind of sexual misconduct in schools, 21 percent were targets of educators, while the remaining 79 percent were targets of other students.

So the 9.6% is already down to 2% when you get to adults.

And what is included includes a great amount of non-contact sexual misconduct. I don't know if your 10x multiplier is sufficient to go from actual abuse claims to every unwanted comment over a 60 year period of time.

Second, you are comparing contact of priests in a parish with that of educators, who are with the children, away from their parents, every weekday for nine months of the year. The only time I had alone with priests in 11 years of Catholic school was as an altar boy and during confession. After that, it was pretty much masses, benediction, and school assemblies / occasional classroom visits. And that was for someone in Catholic school.

I am inclined to believe data that suggests that other institutions may have a similar problem, but I don't think this data makes the case at all. More importantly, the idea that we are only as bad as other institutions is a losing argument. I find no comfort in the idea that the Church is in the XXth percentile on depravity. The numbers are large enough to stand on their own. Furthermore, I can't imagine the reaction if school districts systematically covered up abuse in their ranks, hired lawyers, moved teachers around. A school fires them and sends the police after them. This is what makes the Catholic church abuse scandal so especially bad. People would be willing to accept that there are bad apples. They don't want to hear that the farmer is still selling them at the market.

Anonymous wrote:The church transferred a pedophile from Ireland to California.
How is it these old men hateing men in Rome have so much concern about about the yet to be born and so little concern for our children. The church is so discredited in Ireland no new priests were ordained this year. One women's message to Rome, stay away from my internal plumbing, birth control and CHILDREN


http://religiouschildabuse.blogspot.com/2011/06/irish-priest-who-was-known-pedophile.html

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rate of offending among priests is shaking out at roughly 2.5%. The last ten years were the best reporting environment that's ever existed to root out a group of offenders.

The rate in public school is higher.

Really, cite please. I don't recall one in 30 teachers turning out to be pedophiles.

6.7% of students reported unwanted contact, 9.6% other forms of sexual misconduct, inclusive:

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf

The author of the report has repeatedly stated that public school abuse is much more prevalent than abuse by priests.

The report also includes a 1994 study that found that of 225 teachers identified for sexual misconduct in NYPS, NONE were reported to police and only one lost his license.

I'm trying to wade through this thing but I'm not finding statements bout prevalence vs catholic church, and your numbers compare percentage of catholic offenders to student victims so they are not comparable statistics. Can you point me to the relevant section of the study that you think makes the case?

Google the author's name for her statements.

Slightly fewer than 11,000 allegations were made in the US covering the period 1950-2002. If you multiply that by ten to cover the usual reporting rate for sexual abuse cases, that's 110,000 victims since 1950. That may be high, since the last decade and a half has brought high social support for victims and significant civil awards, which is an ideal environment for reporting.

In contrast, there are 77 million Catholics in the US, almost all of whom would have had significant contact with priests throughout childhood. To be even more conservative, Catholic school enrollment forty years ago, during the peak years of the allegations, was 5 million. So let's take ALL of the 10x estimate for allegations during the entire 52-year period and express it as a percentage of the Catholic school enrollment for one year in the 60s.

It's 2.2%.

Do you see what I'm getting at? The perception of abuse is very high, because so many allegations were made at once, but those allegations covered more than fifty years. The real issue isn't a high prevalence of offending, but the institutional coverups and opportunities to re-offend.

But - 225/0. Coverups were obviously not just a church issue. My private school fired a hebephile rather than deal with the scandal, and he went on to teach elsewhere. And frankly, if you want access to children, the priesthood is by far the most demanding and difficult way to get it. You can get hired at the neighborhood rec center with a high school diploma, and they're not that picky.

The church transferred a pedophile from Ireland to California.
How is it these old men hateing men in Rome have so much concern about about the yet to be born and so little concern for our children. The church is so discredited in Ireland no new priests were ordained this year. One women's message to Rome, stay away from my internal plumbing, birth control and CHILDREN


http://religiouschildabuse.blogspot.com/2011/06/irish-priest-who-was-known-pedophile.html

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rate of offending among priests is shaking out at roughly 2.5%. The last ten years were the best reporting environment that's ever existed to root out a group of offenders.

The rate in public school is higher.

Really, cite please. I don't recall one in 30 teachers turning out to be pedophiles.

6.7% of students reported unwanted contact, 9.6% other forms of sexual misconduct, inclusive:

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf

The author of the report has repeatedly stated that public school abuse is much more prevalent than abuse by priests.

The report also includes a 1994 study that found that of 225 teachers identified for sexual misconduct in NYPS, NONE were reported to police and only one lost his license.

I'm trying to wade through this thing but I'm not finding statements bout prevalence vs catholic church, and your numbers compare percentage of catholic offenders to student victims so they are not comparable statistics. Can you point me to the relevant section of the study that you think makes the case?

People keep your eyes open. A priest is not a person from another planet ordained to be asexual and never have desires.
If a man does not have a girlfriend or a wife and spends a lot of time with kids and has no other adult circle that is age appropriate, then it is time to get suspicious.
The people who find young boys attractive are among us and all of them are not abusers.
Catholic church needs some serious reform. People have their own bibles at home and do not need a priest or a church to interprit the book to them anymore

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rate of offending among priests is shaking out at roughly 2.5%. The last ten years were the best reporting environment that's ever existed to root out a group of offenders.

The rate in public school is higher.

Really, cite please. I don't recall one in 30 teachers turning out to be pedophiles.

6.7% of students reported unwanted contact, 9.6% other forms of sexual misconduct, inclusive:

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf

The author of the report has repeatedly stated that public school abuse is much more prevalent than abuse by priests.

The report also includes a 1994 study that found that of 225 teachers identified for sexual misconduct in NYPS, NONE were reported to police and only one lost his license.

Anonymous wrote:Not the OP and I agree the error is blatant, but to distract from what the OP was saying to us, renders these spelling critics down to the level of being just another apologist for the horrors the Catholic Church hierarchy has inflicted upon our children

How is pointing out some really egregious spelling errors at all the equivalent of being an apologist for the pedophiles in the Roman Catholc Church? You, sir or madam, have won the internets tonight with your wild eyed claims of false equivalence.

I'm not distracted from the fact that, basically, the RCC functioned as a non-official pedophile cover, efficiently moving them around and never letting anyone know. I'm also not distracted from the fact that dirty, disgusting pedophiles walk among us right now, as anyone who has ever heard stories from the people who process security clearances can attest. There are a lot of incredibly twisted people in this world.

Not the OP and I agree the error is blatant, but to distract from what the OP was saying to us, renders these spelling critics down to the level of being just another apologist for the horrors the Catholic Church hierarchy has inflicted upon our children