Plan B Forum

A FIVE-YEAR study commissioned by America's Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church's sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality is to blame.

Instead the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and who were under stress, landed in the midst of the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s.

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades and the problem grew worse when the church's hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.
The ''blame Woodstock'' explanation is the same floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the US in 2002 and in Europe last year. Initiated in 2006, the study was conducted by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York at a cost of $US1.8 million ($1.7 million).

The bishops have said they hope the report will advance the understanding and prevention of child sexual abuse.

But the researchers concluded it was not possible to identify abusive priests in advance. They had no particular ''psychological characteristics'' or ''developmental histories'' that distinguished them from priests who had not abused.

Since the scandal broke, conservatives in the church have blamed gay priests for perpetrating the abuse, and liberals have argued that the all-male, celibate culture of the priesthood was the cause. This report will satisfy neither side.

It says homosexual men began entering the seminaries ''in noticeable numbers'' from the late 1970s through to the 1980s. By the time this cohort entered the priesthood, in the mid-1980s, reports of sexual abuse of minors by priests began to drop and then to level off. Many more boys than girls were victimised, the report says, not because the perpetrators were gay but simply because the priests had more access to boys.

In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 per cent of the abusive priests exhibited behaviour consistent with paedophilia. ''Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as 'paedophile priests','' the report says.

That finding is controversial because the report employs a definition of ''prepubescent'' children as those age 10 and under. But the American Psychiatric Association classifies a prepubescent child as 13 or under. If the researchers had used that cut-off, most of the victims would have been considered prepubescent.

Even before seeing it, victims' advocates criticised the report as suspect because it relied on data provided by the church's dioceses and religious orders.

Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability .org, a website that compiles reports on abuse cases, said: ''There aren't many dioceses where prosecutors have gotten involved, but in every single instance there's a vast gap - a multiplier of two, three or four times - between the numbers of perpetrators that the prosecutors find and what the bishops released.''

The John Jay report says that because there are no comparable studies of other institutions, religious or secular, ''It is impossible to accurately compare the rate of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to rates of abuse in other organisations.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/woodstock-e ... z1MkNS6nXF

Study blames culture of era for church’s abuse crisis
Priests poorly trained, report to bishops says
By Lisa Wangsness
Globe Staff / May 18, 2011


WASHINGTON — The sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church was caused by the influence of sweeping social changes and increasing “deviant behavior’’ of the 1960s and 1970s on priests who were inadequately trained, emotionally unprepared, and isolated, according to a new report commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops.


Researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, who spent five years conducting the most expensive and extensive study of sexual abuse in the Catholic church to date, concluded that homosexual priests were no more likely to abuse than heterosexual priests.

They also found that celibacy could not be blamed for the abuse epidemic. Nor could seminaries have done a better job screening for likely offenders because abusive priests had no common profile.

Wrote the authors: “The most significant conclusion drawn from this data is that no single psychological, developmental, or behavioral characteristic differentiated priests who abused minors from those who did not.’’

The report also states that poor training of priests, combined with social isolation, job stress, and few support mechanisms likely contributed to the abuse problem. The decline of sexual abuse in the mid-1980s coincided with better training for seminarians in human sexuality and relationships.

The report, titled “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,’’ appears to deflect most blame for the crisis away from the church. However, the study acknowledges that there was little evidence before 2002 “that diocesan leaders met directly with victims.’’ Instead, church leaders focused on the abusive priests rather than on their victims.

Abusive priests have often been branded pedophiles, but the report — in a declaration that appears destined to stir controversy — insists that fewer than 5 percent actually met that definition. In the process, however, the study’s authors seem to redefine what constitutes pedophilia.

Major associations of psychiatrists typically define pedophilia as interest in children 13 and younger, calling them “prepubescent.’’

But to reach their conclusion about the low incidence of the disorder among priests, the report authors seem to suggest that the prepubescent period ends at age 10.

“The majority of victims were pubescent or postpubescent,’’ the report states. “Thus,’’ they wrote, “it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as pedophile priests.’’

The researchers called the sexual abuse scandal, which began unfolding in Boston in 2002, a “historical problem.’’ They said reports of abuse rose sharply in the mid-1960s, peaked in the late 1970s, and declined in the 1980s, mirroring the trend in society generally.

The report also states that “the documented rise in cases of abuse in the 1960s and 1970s is similar to the rise in other types of “deviant’’ behavior in society, and coincides with social change during this time period.’’

The study, which cost about $2 million, about half of which was paid for by the church, was to be released today by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, but the Religion News Service first reported its findings on its website last night. The Globe also obtained a copy of the report last night.

The study met with quick criticism, however.

“The study seems to focus on the offending priests in a way that minimizes the gravity of their crimes, and gives short shrift to the ‘other crime’ — the enabling, concealing, and fostering of abuse by the US bishops and the Vatican bureaucracy,’’ said Terence McKiernan of Bishop Accountability.org, in a statement on news reports concerning the leaked study last night.

“The report also grotesquely emphasizes the ‘vulnerability’ of the priests who committed the crimes, and neglects the defenseless children who suffered them. In these respects, the first Causes and Context report — the Bennett Report of 2004 — was a better report than its successor.’’

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

. Summary of Survey Data. [10]

Church records indicate that 4,392 priests were accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002. [11] This number represents four percent of the 109,694 priests in active ministry during that time. There were [page 23 begins] approximately 10,667 reported minor victims of clergy sexual abuse during this period, and the Church expended more than half a billion dollars in dealing with the problem.

Eighty-one percent of the victims were male. Although more than three-quarters of the victims were of an age such that the conduct does not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia, there were substantial numbers of very young children who were victimized by priests during this time period. In addition, although many of the reported acts of sexual abuse involved fondling or unspecified abuse, there was also a very large number of allegations of more grave abuse, including acts of oral sex and intercourse.

The number of priests who engaged in sexual abuse of minors and the number of victims of that abuse changed dramatically during this time period. Although there were reported acts of sexual abuse of minors in every year, the incidence of reported abuse increased by several orders of magnitude in the 1960s and 1970s. After peaking in the 1970s, the number of incidents decreased through the 1980s and 1990s even more sharply than the incidence rate had increased in the 1960s and 1970s.

The incidence of sexual molestation of a minor under eleven years of age did not vary as greatly throughout the period as did the incidence of molestation of older children. In addition, the incidence of abuse of females did not change as [page 24 begins] dramatically as did the incidence of abuse of males. There was, however, a more than six-fold increase in the number of reported acts of abuse of males aged eleven to seventeen between the 1950s and the 1970s.

Finally, the data indicate that the problem of sexual abuse of minors by priests affected all areas of the country, and not simply certain dioceses that have received sustained public scrutiny, but there was significant variation from diocese to diocese. Some dioceses, even certain large dioceses, had very few or no reported acts of sexual abuse whereas many other dioceses had twenty-five or more priests with accusations of sexual abuse of minors, and one diocese reported that 165 priests in the diocese had been accused of sexual abuse of minors.

2. Data Relating to Accused Priests.

According to the survey data, four percent of priests who were in ministry between 1950 and 2002 have been accused of an act of sexual abuse of minors. The prevalence was highest among diocesan priests. There were 75,694 priests in diocesan ministry between 1950 and 2002. Of those priests, allegations of sexual abuse of minors had been made against 3,265, or 4.3%. By contrast, allegations of sexual abuse of minors had been made with regard to approximately 2.7% of the approximately 34,000 religious order priests in ministry during the time period. The remaining approximately 200 priests alleged to have sexually abused a minor [page 25 begins] during this period were "extern" priests; that is, priests resident in a diocese different from the diocese in which they had been incardinated. [12]

Fifty-six percent of the accused priests had one reported allegation levied against them. Twenty-seven percent of the priests had two or three allegations levied against them. Nearly fourteen percent had four to nine allegations levied against them. Three percent had ten or more allegations levied against them; these 149 priests with ten or more reported allegations were responsible for almost 3,000 victims, or twenty-seven percent of the allegations.

dales wrote:He was a carpenter.

rubato wrote:The only empirical evidence suggests that they have been enabling systematic sexual abuse for 1,000 years. ...

yrs,
rubato