“Report Spreads Blame for Sex Abuse,” by David Gibson, Religion News Service, National Catholic Reporter, May 17, 2011
“The truth turns out to be far more complex, according to a copy of the report by researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice that was provided by a church leader who believes the findings accurately reflect the causes of the church’s sexual abuse crisis, for good and for ill.
The findings will likely unsettle both liberal and conservative critics, as well as victims’ advocates.”
Does anyone know the names of the researchers and authors of this report?
link to the report off John Jay College’s website… includes link to the authors:
http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/churchstudy/main.asp
Susan… can you put this link on the resource page?
Done. (-:
I don’tknow but it sure appears to be a waste of someone’s @$2million.
This link appears to be Feb 2004 “Nature and Scope” report.
The current May 2011 “Causes and Context” report is at
http://www.usccb.org/mr/causes-and-context-of-sexual-abuse-of-minors-by-catholic-priests-in-the-united-states-1950-2010.pdf
“Data collection commenced in March 2003, and ended in February 2004. The information contained in this report is based upon surveys provided by 195 dioceses and eparchies of the United Statesand its territories, representing 97% all diocesan priests in the United States, and 142 religiouscommunities, representing approximately 64% of religious communities and 83% of all religious priests.”
Call me skeptic, but given the recent revelations that the Philadelphia Archdiocese withheld reports of allegations from its own Review Board, I have reservations about the honesty and forthcoming-ness of the diocesan surveys that provided the data for this study.
I’d like to believe that everything was put on the table, but history hasn’t shown that to be the case… history has shown that to be the problem. How can we know that all the data was put forth by dioceses?
Here are a few “Catholic lies” from the original report:
The John Jay study only got information that the church willingly gave up. It was “unprecedented” because they never gave up anything before.
A few other nuggets the report hides:
3% of parishes didn’t report. Guess which ones didn’t report. It isn’t that complicated to figure out that answer. They were the worst of the lot, and they didn’t have to report, so they didn’t.
Also, the report claims that “only” 4% of priests were pedophiles, but they statistically cheated. They added in priests that had only been priests for a year or two. If you just look at the priests that were priests for the whole time, the number jumps to an “unprecedented” 10%. And those are only the ones that were reported.
The most recent report indicates that the cause of child rape by priests was because of the “free love” of the 60s. Of course, “free love” was sex between consenting adults, and had nothing to do with priests raping children.
Of course, that’s better than the Catholic church’s original excuse, which was that priests raped children because of their dismay “when Joe left Rhoda”.
Kathy and I were speaking about the police brutality analogy. We both find it faulty in that police brutality is typically reactionary to a highly volatile situation. What does a child do to provoke sex abuse?
A child does nothing to provoke abuse. I believe a better analogy is intrafamilial abuse. The bishops are charged with “shepherding their flock”… to include the children, the laity, and the priests. The place of conflict of one of the flock hurting another, and one accusing the other, is not productive unless the bishops take the stand to always report abuse allegations to the authorities. The structure of handling allegations is so very flawed, and I am more convinced that has played a huge part in why this has continued for decades.
Laura, I agree it is much more akin to intrafamilial abuse.
Child rape by a priest is much worse than intrafamilail abuse because:
– the priest should know better (am I the only one who can’t believe this ever happened once?)
– the child is taught to trust a priest more than their own family or parents because the priest is Jesus Christ on earth, and the child’s place in eternity depends on that
These tens of thousands of priests and the bishops that lie for them are the most evil people on earth.
At least when you deal with Saddam Hussein, or Ghaddaffi, you know they are evil from the beginning. They don’t give children the illusion of being their savior, and then rape them for sexual satisfaction just because they can, then lie about it while preaching about honesty.
Patrick.. the bishops should know better, too.
** Further data that should support opening the SOL…
Executive Summary, page 3:
“It is impossible to determine from our surveys what percent of all actual cases of abuse that occurred between 1950 and 2002 have been reported to the Church and are therefore in our dataset. Allegations of child sexual abuse are made gradually over an extended time period and it is likely that further allegations will be made with respect to recent time periods covered in our surveys. **Less than 13% of allegations were made in the year in which the abuse allegedly began, and more than 25% of the allegations were made more than 30 years after the alleged abuse began.”**
Patrick posted:”- the child is taught to trust a priest more than their own family or parents because the priest is Jesus Christ on earth, and the child’s place in eternity depends on that.”
It is debatable Patrick whether official Roman doctrine taught exactly what you say here; certainly I never thought of my priests as “Jesus Christ on earth.” Here is what I do maintain: Roman teaching is that to obey the priests [Catholic Church] is to obey God, and Jesus Christ; and to disobey the church is to disobey
God. I remember that it is the pope, not the priest who is the visible representative [vicar] of Christ on earth that we were taught.The teaching that the Roman priest is alter Christos, “another Christ” in my understanding, means the priest is empowered by God to offer the same sacrifice [in an “unbloody” manner] as was offered by Christ once at Calvary. Aside from the fact that this idea [I call it “idea”]is abolished by scripture (Hebrews epistle)it does , as you say, establish the priest as an authority figure in young, impressionable minds.If I were to try and pick out any particular factor that was cardinal in my decision to leave the practice of Catholicism, it might be that because this “authority” is exercised by Romanism to enforce the declarations of the Council of Trent, e.g., that contrary to what critics citing scripture believe—[Luther, later the “Grace teachers” dispensationalists etc.]no one, repeat no one can be assured of being with Christ in eternity by means of BELIEVING THE SAVING WORD OF GOD in the scriptures. By this means, Rome has
held the millions in bondage to their power over centuries.
So, when a child is molested by these authority figures, the confusion, guilt and despair must be incalculable. My point, what i desire to say— is that when these victims are convicted in their own hearts that they have sinned by participating in the molestation, this same Romanism interposes itself between the poor sinner [victim] and the grace of God that the scriptures contain as a free gift from Christ. [See the edicts of the Council of Trent.]
Gerald, Your thoughts are the very ones that have me half-way out the door of the RCC at this moment.
Arthur’s Jones’ statement brought to mind a particular thought from the past; the “…same system of god-like presences on altar, in pulpit, mediating — in eras of spiritual mind-control — like their Roman Catholic colleagues as to whether the supplicant or sinner went to Heaven or Hell” (NCR-18 May).
http://ncronline.org/blogs/john-jay-sex-abuse-report-cites-wrong-culture-culprit
When I was in seminary it was made crystal clear that central to our power over the flock was the ability to forgive sins. When a person believes that they must go through the Church (the cleric) to reach Heaven, now that’s power!
That’s the “SPIRITUAL MIND-CONTROL” Arthur is referring to. Indoctrination of this nature is very difficult to over come. However, unless you are able to overcome it, the clerics’ own that portion of your mind.
The Jesuits used to claim, “Give me a child until the age of seven and I’ll show you the man,” They would take a child and turn him into anything they wanted, part of which is a spiritual slave. At a slave, the Master (The RCC) determines your eternal destiny.
If an individual can not overcome this indoctrination, the RCC will continue doing what She has done to you, is doing to you, and will continue to do to you!
THE ‘RCC’ ALWAYS PUTS OUT CONVOLUTED INFORMATION SO THAT EVERYONE HAS A ‘THEORY’ BUT NO ONE HAS THE FACTS. TO ME THIS AN ATTEMPT TO ‘OBSCURE’ WHO KNEW WHAT AND WHEN !
drwho13 wrote in part:
“Gerald, Your thoughts are the very ones that have me half-way out the door of the RCC at this moment”….
“When I was in seminary it was made crystal clear that central to our power over the flock was the ability to forgive sins. When a person believes that they must go through the Church (the cleric) to reach Heaven, now that’s power!
That’s the “SPIRITUAL MIND-CONTROL” Arthur is referring to. Indoctrination of this nature is very difficult to over come. However, unless you are able to overcome it, the clerics’ own that portion of your mind.
The Jesuits used to claim, “Give me a child until the age of seven and I’ll show you the man,” They would take a child and turn him into anything they wanted, part of which is a spiritual slave. At a slave, the Master (The RCC) determines your eternal destiny.
If an individual can not overcome this indoctrination, the RCC will continue doing what She has done to you, is doing to you, and will continue to do to you!”
What gave me freedom from the “slavery” you speak of was apostle Paul’s preaching of the Cross, his gospel of grace received from Christ in heaven. My memory is “tricky” at this stage, but I don’t really believe that is the reason I had forgotten about fearing “the priest’s authority over my eternal destiny.” You did remind me of it , and it make me shudder, but not for long because the Cross has set me free of that.
[1 Corinthians 15:1-4]
This study makes me feel ill. As far as I am concerned the data they used will most certainly be flawed. We just heard the head of the review board talk about prescreening cases that were submitted to them and the failure to provide all relevant information. The bishops paid a hefty sum to have this report done and were relied on to provide the vast majority of data – so this is a joke no matter what anyone says. In my opinion it deserves no more discussion than the full page ads that donahue puts in the New York papers – it is all propaganda.
This study reminds of the way that the individual Dioceses are audited by the Gavin Group regarding caes of clergy sex abuse.The Dioceses are asked to disclose information,the Gavin organization does not have access to files,it is all based on the information that the Dioceses chooses to report.It would be like if the IRS asked us to fill out our taxes and report our income with no documentation from employers.Can you imagine if the IRS worked on an honor system where the only proof of income was what people chose to report?
The NYT article about it was very interesting…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/us/18bishops.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
Thanks. I’ll post this, too.
So most aren’t pedophiles according to this report. It is still sex abuse of minors by adults! It’s not any better – in fact it may be worse. At least pedophilia is a defined psychological condition.
Since we have the “data” can some org get the base data that was used? If they can release this report based on cases, then that data should be available to any lawyer. Or did they as stated above hold on to the worse cases. Also, as in rapists there are usually at least 20 cases per predator and usually more. Even a 4% number is too many as far as the number of victims especially per 1990. Took till 2006 before PA listed 2006 cases on their website as involving children.
Sorry, more questions but have to go out.
The number and percentage of “pedophiles” in the study is skewed by the authors counting only children 10 and under as “prepubescent” and their victimizers and pedophiles. Technically those who abuse adolescents are “ephebophiles” who have a better chance of recovery from their condition, but most authorities consider those who abuse children up to 14 or so to be pedophiles. A great many of those who suffered abuse were in the 9-14 year old range at the time of the abuse. I’m disappointed in the professionals who did the study that they wimped on this point. That said, I think it’s true that a relatively small percentage of priests have ever abused (one is too many!) and feel sorry for the good priests who are suffering—I blame the bishops and chancery personnel who facilitated abuse and re-victimized victims who reported abuse to them.