Some statistics on sexual abuse by priests

From the National Catholic Reporter via Catholic Online:

Here’s the problem with the Catholic League’s analysis: It’s simply not true. It’s spin, designed to add heat rather than light to the discussion over the greatest challenge to confront the U.S. church since its founding.

Here’s what the study, conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, really found:

- Of the 6,089 victims assaulted by a priest with multiple victims, two-thirds were age 14 or younger, 20 percent age 10 or younger;

- Of the 1,178 boys assaulted by a priest reported to have abused one minor boy, 55 percent of the victims were age 14 or younger;

- Of the 1,159 girls molested by a multiple-abuser priest, nearly 77 percent were age 14 or younger;

- Of the 591 girls abused by a priest reported to have molested one girl, two-thirds of the victims were 14 or younger, nearly one-third age 10 or younger.

In the world of sociology, of data collection, these statistics can be parsed. What’s “not a little kid”? Is a 14-year-old “post-pubescent”? What about a 13-year-old? A 12-year-old? Is the crime of child rape mitigated by the age of the child? The ugly inference we are to take from this is that some (many? most?) sexually adventurous teens, largely gay, got what they were looking for.

The U.S. bishops play into this sociological-psychosexual mumbo jumbo. The department they established to deal with priest abusers is officially titled the “Office of Child and Youth Protection.” Child and youth. As if a 14-year-old, an eighth or ninth grader, is no longer a child. Amazing.

The League's New York Times ad with a different spin on the scandal is found here.

I'd quote it but it's in a format that doesn't seem to be easily transferable here.

My take? I agree with the League that an unfair emphasis is placed on Catholic priests and I wonder why the research hasn't been done to show the levels of pedophilia among public school teachers or athletic coaches.

However, I'm with the NCR in saying that a child is still a child at age 14, though experts I heard at the Cornwall Inquiry did make a distinction between prepubescent and postpubescent victims and state that those who are attracted to postpubescent children are the hardest to treat. I think it is ghastly that for Canada the age of consent for sexual activity is 14 and am grateful that today the Conservative government here is going to introduce legislation to raise the "age of protection" to 16.

A priest violating his vows with any child, whether a teenager or not, is a terrible betrayal of the child and of the faith he is supposed to represent. But I fear that some of the glee that people have in reporting these things comes from a desire to bash the faith and the institution of the Church as it does in unmasking the scandal. That's why I believe one must exercise caution and objectivity in looking at any of these figures.