Dear GovernmentShrinker,
I agree that it is appalling that some bishops engaged in cover-ups.
However, your second premise doesn't go over all that well for me. The fact is that parents put their children in the care of teachers, principals, and other folks in the schools. The overwhelming majority of children under the age of 18 are looked after, on a daily basis, directly, by public school teachers and principals.
From my perspective, this is perhaps the one set of folks (with the possible exception of cops) who I'd hold to as high a standard as Catholic hierarchs. It is quite literally part of their job description to care for and protect the children left in their charge for six or more hours per day. It is an extremely minimal expectation that these individuals not actively, maliciously harm their charges.
"In this particular case, the guy didn't have 'a place of employment,' he was working in many different schools on an irregular schedule as a substitute teacher."
From my perspective, that makes it worse, in that there weren't just a few individuals who might have been tipped off to his actions, but possibly dozens and dozens. I might buy that a few folks noticed nothing, or were naive. But dozens and dozens? Doesn't fly with me.
As well, the magnitude of things is a little out-of-balanced. The media were completely outraged that 10,000 children were molested by Catholic priests over a 50 year period. It was a major, national story, as well it should have been.
But these same folks seem rather ho-hum that 100,000 kids are molested in public schools every year.
If one story it sensational, the second is earth-shattering.
sitetest
Apparently dozens and dozens of parents noticed nothing amiss with their children's behavior, and had relationships with their children such that they children didn't tell them about things like this. If the parents have that sort of relationship with their children, they can hardly expect the unionized school teachers and educrats to detect this sort (and children who won't share such inof with their parents aren't likely to share it with school personnel either). Sure, school personnel SHOULD be the sort of people one could hold to the highest standards, but in reality we know it would be naive to expect them to behave like anything but the union hacks and bureaucrats they are.