Is the Times A-Changing? Some Uncomfortable Facts

"If reporting on sexual abuse were accurate, there would be five reports of Protestant, rabbinic or Eastern Orthodox sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse. There would be 200 reports of public school sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse."

From The Fifth Column

Shockingly enough, Newsweek, The New York Times and ABC all show signs of backing off the Catholic aspect of the sexual abuse story.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it myself, but here are excerpts from each organizations' coverage. This is incredible:

Newsweek:

Ernie Allen of national Center for Missing and Exploited Children denies that Catholics have a special or unusual abuse problem....Since the 1980’s, when insurance companies started issuing policies, they have not charged Catholics higher premiums...

The more youth formation programs you have, the more abuse you have – premiums are a function of number of youth programs, not denomination. Catholic Church has by far the largest school network in the nation...Catholics are also the single largest denomination in the nation and the second largest in the world (behind Islam).

Of 110,000 priests active 1950-1992, only 4% have had complaints (about 4400).

4392 priests complained about from 10,667 victims.149 priests responsible for 25,000 cases 75% of abuse comes from families and friends.

Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations.

As the report notes, insurance companies don't charge Catholics higher premiums than other faiths, because Catholic priests are not at special risk of offending. Premium rates are pegged to the number of youth programs a church has - nothing else. The more youth programs you run, the more claims there are, and therefore the higher the premiums. Catholics have the largest private school program in the nation.

As a side note to Newsweek's coverage, I again refer back to the Shakeshaft report, one of the most damning and one of the most completely ignored stories of the first decade of the 21st century.

When Shakeshaft's report on public school education from 1990-2000 is compared to the John Jay report on Catholic priest abuse, a remarkable thing emerges. In the five decades from 1950 to 2000, we saw 11,000 abuse allegations against roughly 6700 priests. 6700 were substantiated, 1000 were unsubstantiated, the rest were moot as the priest had died. 78% of the Catholic priest victims were between the ages of 11 and 17, while 6% were 7 or younger.
4.5 million versus 11,000.

One decade versus 5 decades.

Hmmm.....

That means 450,000 abuse cases from the public schools each year versus 220 abuse cases per year from Catholic priests. A difference of 2000 percent.

Perhaps this is why school teachers were, at one time, required by law to be single and they were forbidden to date while they were teachers. Vows of celibacy apparently protect against abuse. And even early 20th-century Protestants knew it.

The New York Times confirms this:

If the rate of abuse among Catholic priests stands (per the John Jay data) at roughly 4 percent, that’s less than half the rate that Allen cites for the population as a whole. And the Jay study covers the sweep of the last 50 years; if you compare the rate of accusations against priests now (as opposed to during the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s) to Allen’s 10 percent figure, it looks like Catholic clergy currently abuse children and teenagers at about one-fifth the rate of the male population as a whole.

In this same week, ABC News followed up with a report on sexual abuse in athletic and fast food venues. It seems some USA Swimming coaches were routinely photographing and abusing the swimmers they trained.

USA Swimming's response?

The executive director of USA Swimming, Chuck Wielgus, acknowledged the problem, but said "It's "It's not nearly as serious in USA Swimming as it might be in the rest of society."
"I don't want to be the one to sit here and say 36 is not too many, one is too many, but this is not just a problem that's isolated to one sport," said Wielgus.

In some cases, the swimming coaches found to have been sexual predators were able to move from town to town, one step ahead of police and angry victims and their parents.

"We have a system that does not encourage the reporting," said Bob Allard, a San Jose, CA lawyer representing sex abuse victims suing USA Swimming....

Asked if he had apologized to any of the young teen victims, Wielgus responded, "You feel I need to apologize to them?"He added, "I think it's unfair for you to ask me whether individually or me as the representative of an organization to apologize for something when all we are trying to do is everything we possibly can to create a safe and healthy environment for kids who are participating in our particular activity."

But ABC wasn't done. It then continued with a segment on Starbucks and other fast food venues. When it was demonstrated that employees were sexually abused by supervisors:

Starbucks executives declined to be interviewed but in a statement the company said, "These two employees concealed their relationship from Starbucks, which violated company policy. We are confident that the case will ultimately be resolved in finding that Starbucks is not at fault."

...The case turned ugly as the Starbucks law firm, Akin Gump, used hard ball tactics to defend their client, including successfully seeking to make public the young woman's sexual history once it learned she had been interviewed for "20/20."

"They are trying to defend themselves by calling me a slut," she told "20/20." "It's intimidation. It's harassing to sit though deposition and just be re-victimized."

Federal judge Andrew J. Guilford agreed with Starbucks lawyers and ordered the information unsealed because of the company's need "to defend themselves" and "level the playing field."

Starbucks disclosed in court papers that the woman has had sexual encounters with 12 men other than Horton, seven of them before she met Horton.

Starbucks says it does have a strict policy against sexual harassment and managers dating baristas, but there is nothing specific about relationships with teens under the age of 18.

McDonalds and Taco Bell also have lawsuits pending against them, and those lawsuits likewise involve statutory rape by supervisors.

And, of course, NO ONE wants to talk about the sleeping elephant of Islam, where child marriage is perfectly in accord with Muslim morality, indeed, it is praised as a way to emulate the prophet Mohammed.

“In God’s eyes legal, but in laws of the country (Malaysia) not legal,” said the Kijang state assemblywoman when questioned on the legality of child marriages [in Islam]....

Section 8 of the Kelantan Muslim Family Law Enactment (2000) states that any girl below 16 cannot marry, except with written permission from the Syariah Court.

When questioned on what criteria would merit such consent, Ubaidah replied that in cases where a girl and her partner are “madly in love beyond control”, the court would grant them permission to marry. A father who wishes to marry the girl off to a rich man may also receive similar authorisation from the court.

Although Ubaidah said that a girl’s consent and understanding is needed before marrying her off, she said: “Silence is consent”. If a girl is married off without her consent, she can seek help from her relatives or approach the religious department herself, Ubaidah added.

Now, this is just one story about sharia law in Malaysia.

We could also bring forward stories from Yemen, where a 13-year old girl died of bleeding from genital tears five days after her marriage to a 30 year-old man, or Saudi Arabia, where the shariah court refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year old to a man in his late 40's, or Pakistan, where girl children are married off to adult men to settle family feuds (swara), pay a debt, or as part of a deal to marry off an older sibling. A seven year old married to a 45-year old man with other living wives and children is absolutely common.

The list could go on, but why bother?

If reporting on sexual abuse were accurate, there would be five reports of Protestant, rabbinic or Eastern Orthodox sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse. There would be 200 reports of public school sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse. There would be thousands of reports of Muslim sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse.

Wherever there is sharia, there is what Westerners would call child sexual abuse. It is legal, moral and laudable. But no one goes after the imams for this, do they?

Who do they go after? Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

As for Cardinal Ratzinger's culpability, he was appointed head of the CDF in 1981. Take a close look at the chart from the John Jay report provided by the New York Times blogger:

Do you notice anything interesting? Do you see how that red line (number of cases) and that blue line (number of priests committing abuse) both begin a REALLY rapid descent? Well, if you look closely at the year when that rapid fall begins, that year would be 1981 - two years after John Paul II is elected Pope and the same year Ratzinger is picked to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Even though the CDF won't streamline the process and gain sole jurisdiction over abuse cases until 2001, the chart shows that the minute Ratzinger became the head of CDF, someone, somewhere started shutting these abusive priests down. By 1995, most of the rat holes had been closed.

The press didn't pick up on what was going on until AFTER Ratzinger or one of his confreres had already finished most of the work.