Monday, April 19, 2010

""We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed..."

Something that everyone should know by now. A good story, for the most part--although since when did we exclude women?:

The Catholic sex-abuse stories emerging every day suggest that Catholics have a much bigger problem with child molestation than other denominations and the general population. Many point to peculiarities of the Catholic Church (its celibacy rules for priests, its insular hierarchy, its exclusion of women) to infer that there's something particularly pernicious about Catholic clerics that predisposes them to these horrific acts. It's no wonder that, back in 2002—when the last Catholic sex-abuse scandal was making headlines—a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 64 percent of those queried thought Catholic priests "frequently'' abused children.

Yet experts say there's simply no data to support the claim at all. No formal comparative study has ever broken down child sexual abuse by denomination, and only the Catholic Church has released detailed data about its own. But based on the surveys and studies conducted by different denominations over the past 30 years, experts who study child abuse say they see little reason to conclude that sexual abuse is mostly a Catholic issue. "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others."

More goodness follows. Among other things: insurance companies consider the Catholic Church no higher a risk for such cases than any other denomination

1 comment:

Singh is King said...

The saga of sex scandals inside the Catholic clergy reached a new high with the publication of two official reports that investigated cases of child abuse by Catholic priests.Read on. http://www.lawisgreek.com/child-abuse-and-sex-scandals-involving-catholic-clergy/

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