The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal is well known and caused a lot of damage to the church’s reputation.
In 2018, a Pennsylvania grand jury report was released. It was a 1,400-page document compiled over two years. The report implicated 300 priests in the sex abuse of over 1,000 minors across six of the state’s eight dioceses.
The report revealed that this abuse was made possible by a widespread, systematic cover-up from church leaders and other clergy.
Senior church officials and bishops did not contact law enforcement about allegations. Instead, they quietly reshuffled offending priests. These priests were typically placed in positions where they continued to have close contact with a new set of children.
The highest-profile figure accused in participating in such a cover-up was Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, DC.
Many people lost faith in the church, at least temporarily. They were bothered not just by how many children were abused. They were also concerned about how it was handled.
Today, jokes about Catholic priests being pedophiles are common. It’s become a popular belief among many.
Even if most Catholic priests wouldn’t do such a thing, they’re thought to be more likely to be a predator than your neighbor, teacher, or accountant.
However, as they often say, it is not the crime, but the cover-up. A real issue with the sex abuse scandal was the cover-up.
Priests were shifted around, allowing them to continue abusing. This didn’t mean it was okay that the children were abused, or that the church wasn’t responsible go above just punishing the offenders with something more severe than a slap on the wrist, but the stats didn’t lie.
The evidence showed that Catholic priests are no more likely to be pedophiles than anyone else who ends up with a position of power over a child.
Current US Sexual Abuse Statistics
- There are over 42 million adult sexual abuse survivors in the US.
- Males make up anywhere between 80% and 90% of all sex offenders.
- Girls are two to three times more likely to be molested.
- Children with disabilities are almost three times more likely to suffer sexual assault.
- Released child molestors are four times more likely to get rearrested for a sex crime.
- There are around 500,000 active predators on the internet every day.
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Pedophiles will go wherever there are children into systems they can hide.
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So evil and depraved! And it has been well established that these predators do not change, do not rehabilitate, do not ‘get over it.’ Why do we ever let them see the light of day once they have been caught and convicted?
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Keep in mind that so-called “expert opinion” at the time most of these incidents are alleged to have occurred was that pedophiles COULD be rehabilitated. In many cases, the church authorities responsible for moving pedophile priests to other locations were just following what the “experts” were telling them.
Many of the allegations were about incidents that had happened decades earlier, and often the priests accused had either died or were in nursing homes suffering from dementia. It was thus impossible to prove or disprove that any abuse had happened. But the church paid out huge settlements anyway, which naturally encouraged more “victims” to come out of the woodwork in hope of a big payoff.
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Good point about the length of time between the alleged incidents and the reports – lots of ins and outs to that, I guess. And the notion of false or exaggerated reports, too. What a mess.
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No doubt many of the claims were legit, but once the word got out that the church was compensating victims, the floodgates were opened. Anyone with a grudge against the church, or just looking to make a fast buck, could lodge a claim against a priest who couldn’t defend himself (because he was dead or suffering from dementia) over an incident that supposedly occurred decades earlier to which there were no eyewitnesses who could confirm or deny it.
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Pastors from other religions have practiced depravity, too, but the media tends to report it and move on-if it’s reported at all. Pedophilia is spreading like wildfire now because of the internet/social media. It’s disheartening. 😦
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Every church has its bad apples. But an American child is statistically far more likely to suffer sexual abuse at the hands of a public school teacher than from any member of the clergy.
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Good point. I just heard one today where a STUDENT teacher was somehow involved with a 13-yr-old. She is now on a suicide watch.
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