EXCERPT:
After 9 years and $2 million, the immediate and mostly negative reaction to the new John Jay College study of the “Causes and Contexts” of priestly sex abuse from 1950 to 2002 is understandable for three reasons: (1) it does not really answer the question it needed to address; (2) the explanation it does offer raises more questions than answers; (3) as a study commissioned by bishops and based largely on data they supplied, its tone and language leave it vulnerable to the charge of being a whitewash.
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Notice the report does not ask “Why did priests commit child sex abuse and remain unchecked?” Or “why did Bishops cover-up?” it asks only “why did such abuse peak in the 1970s?” this is not, of course, the question on the public’s mind. People are looking for a remedy--a preventive--to ensure that such a scandal cannot happen again. They want to know the root cause, which this study does not even address.
Instead, this new study begins by assuming the findings of John Jay College’s first study in 2004 on the “Nature and Scope” of the problem of child sexual abuse (which claimed abuse peaked in the 1970s) as definitive. But that study relied on data I find highly dubious. First, it used “allegations” of abuse as its base numbers, even though admitting “it is impossible to determine from our surveys what percent of all actual cases of abuse…have been reported to the church.” In other words, both studies depend on assuming that the reporting rate of abuse has been reasonably accurate, and that it has not varied much between 1950 and 2002.
Reporting rates are, of course, a major issue in estimating crime trends--especially for crimes (such as rape, incest, Et cetera) where victims may feel ashamed and remain silent. Amid all the changes of the last 60 years, there is less stigma attached to victims who come forward, and more emphasis on their need for healing and justice. Thus the reporting rates for many such crimes have risen. We cannot assume that reporting rates for sex abuse did not change as well--and if they did, the question “why did abuse peak in the 1970s” becomes moot.
If, by contrast, we assume that reporting rates were not accurate and stable over 60 years, then the resulting “peak” in the 1970s seems rather predictable, for two reasons.
First, priests ordained before 1950 represent 21.3% of allegations, but they abused at a time when victims were less likely to report, and some of their victims are already deceased; moreover if they abused before 1950, the report does not include all their cases. So the actual percentage of abuses by those priests is probably higher than 21.3%.
Second, the priests ordained after 1975 account for 10.7% of all allegations--but the study admits “These conclusions have to be qualified because additional allegations for these time periods may surface in the future.” In fact, more than 25% of allegations came more than 30 years after the alleged abuse. So their reported 10.7% is probably too low as well.
In short, the study includes one time period too old for accurate reporting (given the gaps due silence and death for older priests) and another time period too recent for accurate reporting (given the time-lagged reporting on younger priests). Isn’t it common sense that allegations would be heaviest for priests ordained in between? Yet the entire purpose of the new study is to explain what caused this “peak” --which may not be real at all, but a kind of “false positive.”
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In short, we still don’t know why priests raped kids and got away with it.
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