The politics of statistics
The National Catholic Reporter‘s June 16 editorial, “Spin without End in Abuse Scandal,” takes issue with the Catholic League’s ad on the June 7 New York Times op-ed page. NCR writes:
The clergy sex abuse crisis — some would have us believe — is largely about priests taking advantage of or being seduced by older teenage boys. In other words, it’s a gay thing.
That’s the view of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, as articulated by the group’s president William A. Donohue.
“Too many sexually active gays have been in the priesthood, and it’s about time they were routed out,” Donohue told Fox News at the height of the scandal. The clergy sex abuse crisis is “a homosexual scandal, not a pedophilia scandal,” he said on NBC’s Today Show.
The line in the Catholic League’s ad that NCR finds problematic is this: “81 percent of the victims were male, and most were not little kids–they were post-pubescent (the identical figure was reported in cases found between 1950-2002).”
This figure has been used and abused in several quarters as proof that the sexual abuse scandal is really a gay-priest problem. Those who cite the 81-percent figure in this way typically pair it with some version of the following (from the second link in the last sentence): Since 78 percent of the victims were adolescent (between 11 and 17), this is clearly an issue of homosexuality, not sexual abuse, strictly speaking.
Let’s look at what the 2003 John Jay study actually says. From the Executive Summary:
The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female.
I’m no statistician, nor am I suggesting that homosexuality had nothing to do with any of the abuse, but it strikes me as obvious that the age breakdown as offered by John Jay–not Bill Donohue, Russell Shaw, or ur-Diogenes–complicates the claim that the sexual-abuse scandal is best characterized as a “homosexual scandal.”
Do the math. Certainly it’s true that 78 percent of the victims were between the ages of 11 and 17. But does it follow that these victims were, as Donohue has it, “not little kids”? If you break the numbers down as John Jay does, you see that 51 percent of victims were between 11 and 14. Is it certain that “most” of those children were postpubescent? The DSM-IV, after all, defines pedophilia as involving sexual activity by an adult with a prepubescent child–13 or younger.
Rather than conflating the groupings in the direction of postpubescence, what if we conflate downward? We get this: 73 percent of all victims were under 14 years of age. Doesn’t fit so neatly into the category of “gay problem” now, does it?
Tags: Bill Donohue, Sexual-abuse crisis
Does the percentage of clergy sexual abuse that is basically homosexual in nature mirror the percentage of 1) homosexuals in society? or 2) the society-wide rates of sexual abuse that would be considered homosexual in nature?
It would be my hunch that the percentage of clergy sexual abuse that is gay in nature would be larger by a degree of magnitude.
But maybe this is mistaken way of viewing matters.
People who want to use the statistics to rout active homosexuals, to argue against celibacy, to initiate discussions about the complex nature of human sexual orientation–all discussions that have been spun off from the John Jay report–are all just pushing their own agendas, if you ask me.
As the mother of a 10-year-old boy, I think that if a single priest has molested a single child anywhere in the diocese, there should be swift, effective measures in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
This is not a sexual problem, homo- or hetero-; it’s a credibility problem.
Some years ago, our bishop sent every parish family a copy of the diocese’s policy on child abuse by any diocesan or parish official as well as the phone number of the diocese and state police officer who investigates child abuse cases.
His advice: If your child says he has been abused, call the cops and then call the diocese so we can assist.
One of the major problems with the study of the sex abuse crisis has been its focus on “children”, (little kids?) and not innocent victims. Numerous adults have been abused by clergy taking advantage of their position (it surely happens with Doctors, Psychiatrists and Dentists, for example, and we treat that as a major felony), but not here.
Nor as the NCR Editorial points out have our hierarchy been forthcoming in revealing what’s gone wrong – damage control is thje order of the day.
Clearly, damage control entails closing off SOL legislatiopn and protecting secret files by blaming the media and greedy suing lawyers, and manipulating statistics (or “damn lies”. if you prefer.)
This story seems incomplete to me.
Just check out: http://www.usccb.org/ocyp/JohnJayReport.pdf.
The Total victims:
7267 were male while 1750 were female thus 81% of the victims were males being sexually abused by other males. I think that explains the orientation of the abuse.
That is why the premise in the editorial is misleading in my opinion.
Most perpetrators were homosexual because they did unpleasant things to males who were sexually (and only sexually) mature. It is the general consensus that abusing sexually mature minors is not pedophilia but is ephebophilia. The illegality & sinfulness in all of this is apparent but we have to remember that the rightness and wrongness in these actions should not be focused only upon whatever the specific age of consent laws that define a “minor” in a locality happen to be. Some of these horrible acts would be legal in Europe – believe it or not – because they have lower age of consent laws there. The problem is far deeper than legality and financial obligations. Perhaps that is why the Holy See ordered the visitations.
The problem of clergy and religious who violate their vows with partners over the specific age of consent (some places only 16) is related to this IMO. What was wrong and illegal at age 15 does not become “proper” on a youngster’s 16th or 18th birthday now matter what the laws may suggest.
ISTM prayer, reform, fidelity and penance are needed. Hear us Lord.
Did you even read the post? My point was to emphasize the fact that the sex of the victims is not enough to determine anything about the role of the abuser’s sexual orientation.
This is fascinating: “Most perpetrators were homosexual because they did unpleasant things to males who were sexually (and only sexually) mature. It is the general consensus that abusing sexually mature minors is not pedophilia but is ephebophilia.” The first sentence is incoherent. Most perps were homosexual because they did things to sexually mature males? That’s something like a failed tautology. And the second is without basis in fact. The consensus is so general that “ephebophelia” isn’t recognized by the DSM-IV.
>>the sex of the victims is not enough to determine anything about the role of the abuser’s sexual orientation.<<
“Anything”? So maybe the sex of the victims shouldn’t even be recorded then?
Try this, “mlj”: The sex of the victims is not enough to determine the role of sexual orientation in the abuse crisis. But I’m sure you realize it’s absurd to suggest the sex of victims shouldn’t be recorded.
In the ad in question, the statistics are not exploited for political purposes. Perhaps that was done elsewhere, but the ad itself doesn’t do it. Its main point is a defense of the vast majority of Catholic priests who have not had “credible” accusations brought against them.
That’s another point: the statistics are about accusations, not convictions, of vile behavior. I have a classmate who was publicly removed from his post on the basis of an accusation someone at the Chancery thought was “credible,” only to be exonerated many months later, with less public attention, of course. Another classmate died before he could defend himself, but his name is forever on the list of those his archdiocese publicly listed as having had a “credible accusation” brought against them.
By the way, may the charge of playing politics with the statistics go in only one direction?
The idea that Donohue’s public activity is divorced from his politics is not a genuine concept. Perhaps if you received his daily faxes you’d have a better sense of this. But I was using “political” in the broad sense of the term.
If you have a problem with the way I’ve laid out the statistics, Joe, come out and say it.
This thread isn’t about the vast majority of priests who are not sexual abusers. This thread is about those who would arrive at simple conclusions about the abuse crisis from complex data sets. It’s a travesty whenever anyone, priest or layperson, is unjustly accused of an atrocity. Do you reject the John Jay study on this basis?
The minimzation of sexuak abuse by referring to victims as “mature minors” lacks insight into the misuse of power in these abuses; the horrors of Fr.Shanley is a clear example of that and it will be interesting to look at the upcoming trial of Fr.Fushek in Phoenix in that context also,
The issue is not about “innocent” priests. The vast majority of priests are not guilty of abusing minors and there will surely be a few accusations without base. But the difficulty many victims have in geing believed by their fellow catholics -take Barnara Blaine’s story, for example – is shocking.
It should be added that if Sipe and company are correct (and I think they are), many priests do not observe their vows even if they are not criminals. For a long time, clergy were protected from criminal prosecution, but now the cat is out of the bag and we see priest accused not only of sex cimes, but also embezzlement and even murder.
The issue is how much do we know. Bishops continue to try to keep the lid on by whatever legal means; consider particularly what goes on in Los Angeles. Think about what came out, say, on Long Island or in Philadelphia.
Grant:
Calm down! I wasn’t implying that you are one who is politicizing the issue. My last comment was a general one. I didn’t have you particularly in mind. And I don’t have a problem with the Jay study.
Your thread was not about the vast majority of priests who are not sexual abusers, but the ad was about that, and you provided a link to the ad, but I thought its main point had been passed over.
I’m sorry I misread you. (But I didn’t mean to imply, nor I hope did anyone in this thread, that politicized stats are one-directional.) I certainly agree with the ad’s main point, as I’m sure do Commonweal readers, but the other elements that piggyback on it beg interrogation.