Forgotten Study: Abuse in School 100 Times Worse than by Priests

LifeSiteNews.com -- Your Life, Family, and Cutlure Outpost ^ | April 1, 2010 | By James Tillman and John Jalsevac

[topher]

Thursday April 1, 2010

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Forgotten Study: Abuse in School 100 Times Worse than by Priests

By James Tillman and John Jalsevac

WASHINGTON, DC, April 1, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the last several weeks such a quantity of ink has been spilled in newspapers across the globe about the priestly sex abuse scandals, that a casual reader might be forgiven for thinking that Catholic priests are the worst and most common perpetrators of child sex abuse.

But according to Charol Shakeshaft, the researcher of a little-remembered 2004 study prepared for the U.S. Department of Education, "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."

After effectively disappearing from the radar, Shakeshaft’s study is now being revisited by commentators seeking to restore a sense of proportion to the mainstream coverage of the Church scandal.

According to the 2004 study “the most accurate data available at this time” indicates that “nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.”

“Educator sexual misconduct is woefully under-studied,” writes the researcher. “We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators and targets.  There are many questions that call for answers.“

In an article published on Monday, renowned Catholic commentator George Weigel referred to the Shakeshaft study, and observed that “The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague” in which Catholic priests constitute only a small minority of perpetrators.

While Weigel observes that the findings of Shakeshaft’s study do nothing to mitigate the harm caused by priestly abuse, or excuse the “clericalism” and “fideism” that led bishops to ignore the problem, they do point to a gross imbalance in the level of scrutiny given to it, throwing suspicion on the motives of the news outlets that are pouring their resources into digging up decades-old dirt on the Church.

“The narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down," he writes. 

Weigel observes that priestly sex abuse is “a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared,” and that in recent years the Church has gone to great lengths to punish and remove priestly predators and to protect children. The result of these measures is that “six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members.”

Despite these facts, however, “the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young.”

Outside of the Church, Shakeshaft is not alone in highlighting the largely unaddressed, and unpublicized problem of child sex abuse in schools. Sherryll Kraizer, executive director of the Denver-based Safe Child Program, told the Colorado Gazette in 2008 that school employees commonly ignore laws meant to prevent the sexual abuse of children.

“I see it regularly,” Kraizer said. “There are laws against failing to report, but the law is almost never enforced. Almost never.”

“What typically happens is you’ll have a teacher who’s spending a little too much time in a room with one child with the door shut,” Kraizer explained. “Another teacher sees it and reports it to the principal. The principal calls the suspected teacher in and says ‘Don’t do that,’ instead of contacting child protective services.”

“Before you know it, the teacher is driving the student home. A whole series of events will unfold, known to other teachers and the principal, and nobody contacts child services before it’s out of control. You see this documented in records after it eventually ends up in court.”

In an editorial last week, The Gazette revisited the testimony of Kraizer in the context of the Church abuse scandal coverage, concluding that “the much larger crisis remains in our public schools today, where children are raped and groped every day in the United States.”

“The media and others must maintain their watchful eye on the Catholic Church and other religious institutions,” wrote The Gazette, “But it’s no less tragic when a child gets abused at school.”

In 2004, shortly after the Shakeshaft study was released, Catholic League President William Donohue, who was unavailable for an interview for this story, asked, “Where is the media in all this?”

“Isn’t it news that the number of public school students who have been abused by a school employee is more than 100 times greater than the number of minors who have been abused by priests?” he asked.

“All those reporters, columnists, talking heads, attorneys general, D.A.’s, psychologists and victims groups who were so quick on the draw to get priests have a moral obligation to pursue this issue to the max.  If they don’t, they’re a fraud.”

URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10040101.html

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[RobbyS]

Don’t forget the 15-year old runnaway in San Francisco.

[fish hawk]

Even IF this is true, there is still one big difference. When it happens at school they either are fired and or go to jail. Not transferred to another school where they can do it again. Where as the priests, at least some of them were merely transferred to another district, state,or even country, where I'm sure they have not lost their perverted ways.

[MrEdd]

Absolutely.

[piytar]

Bingo!

To the Catholic bashers around here (you know who you are): How do you like the leftist/socialist/fascist company you’re keeping? Isn’t it nice to be on the same side of an issue as zero and his ilk? /hurl

[WILLIALAL]

This is the fact that is the clarion call to all who want to take down the Catholic church. Its the cover up. Even if it is greatly changed now, the stigma is still there in the public’s mind.
The recent stories from Germany Ireland and the US, just reinforce those opinions.
This is the battle the church has to fight and overcome. It will take a public zero tolerance program that is transparent and has confidence of the lay people.

[johniegrad]

The Oregonian newspaper uncovered dozens of cases where teachers accused of sexual misconduct signed secret deals and transferred to another school district.

Most of these teachers are tenured and 40 percent of those transferred are repeat offenders. They call it “passing the garbage” in the schools.

In nearly 16% of the cases, school officials delayed or tried to cover up the sexual molestations.

The series reported that public school administrators routinely transfer abusive teachers from one school district to the next.

This was the third set of accusations that Guevara had molested students. Twice before, when law enforcement officials had decided they lacked the evidence to win a criminal conviction, L.A. Unified officials had quietly put him back in the classroom.

[Scotsman will be Free]

““We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators”
So where’d they get the 9.6%?

[Antoninus]

Do the schools cover it up and transfer the teachers to new schools without telling anyone at the new school about the pedophilia?

What do you think? If the media did a full-court-press on the public schools like they did on the Catholic Church, what do you think they'd turn up? Nothing?

The reason you don't hear more about it is because the media is involved with the cover-up in the public schools.

[Antoninus]

When it happens at school they either are fired and or go to jail. Not transferred to another school where they can do it again.

LOL. Our word for the day is "naivete".

[Scotsman will be Free]

“When it happens at school they either are fired and or go to jail. Not transferred to another school where...”
Schools were frequently covering for their teachers prior to the 1990s. More publicity about the problem and the covering up by the schools resulted in changes.

[saradippity]

I believe Catholics are public enemy #1 because they haven't rolled over on a lot of the social issues yet.

And in addition to that,the Catholic Church has deep pockets. It is an extremely enticing target for the many law firms and lawyers whose continued existence is dependent on drumming up victims and suing for lots of money most of which goes to the firms. In some cases they have sued again and again.

Everything,at least in this country,with a few exceptions,was dealt with by 2002.At that time the big problem turned out to be that the Church had gone soft on their policy of not ordaining homosexuals.

Initially the headlines shrieked out "pedophile priests" and the country was aghast. When the facts emerged there was a problem indeed and it did involve sex and it was tawdry,sinful,ugly and wrong. However,it was also clear that the problem was not so much one of mentally,sick pedophile priests but instead they were manipulative homosexual priests doing business as usual in the homosexual community. What was learned was there is a big difference between men attracted to children {pedophiles} and men attracted to post pubescent males {ephebophilia}.

According to the research firm the Church had hired,80% of all the sexual activity by priests was perpetrated by homosexual priests. The others were abuses against females/women and then pedophiles.

I would conjecture that before this became too common knowledge,the MSM which has a load of homosexual journalists,pundits,editors,commentators in concert with some of their catholic counterparts in the clergy and aided and abetted by infiltrators who had been in position to implode the Church for quite a while let things slide rather than risk exposure to the general public.

So they pulled in their fangs and waited for a new opportunity,and here we are with many people mightily upset about the turn this country has taken toward a more controlled society and others upset and frightened about the dreary economy,what better way to divert attention and maybe even pick up some more money than to have at the Church again.

Diabolic?

[fish hawk]

So what you are saying is, forget the pervert priest, hell, everyone is doing this. Still, in my books, a Priest doing it just some how seems a little more sick than a lay person even if it all is bad. Just as if a regular joe cheats on his wife and lies about it compared to a public elected official does the same thing. Supposedly he was above all that crap and an upstanding person.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Abusive public school teachers are fired or go to jail? I regret to inform you that this is not the case.

If you care to look into it, you can scan your eyes across the Web results here (Link) for hundreds and hundreds of examples.

[SnakeDoctor]

Teacher abuse is definitely a problem ... but, in fairness, teachers are typically removed from classes pretty quickly, fired as quickly as union rules will allow, their crimes are made public and scrutinzed in the media, and some are prosecuted.

One would hope that members of the Body of Christ would do better than they have ... certainly at least as well as public schools at discipling those that are caught. Shuffling people around is not good enough. Excommunication and firing are a minimum.

SnakeDoc

[notaliberal]

To the Catholic bashers around here (you know who you are)

Have you noticd they are always absent on threads like this???!!!!!!

[johniegrad]

So what you are saying is, forget the pervert priest, hell, everyone is doing this.

No, not at all but nice try. Here, let me trace the conversation for you.

You said: Even IF this is true, there is still one big difference. When it happens at school they either are fired and or go to jail. Not transferred to another school where they can do it again.

You did say that, didn't you?

I cited several instances that disproved the point you were trying to make.

Then you said: So what you are saying is, forget the pervert priest, hell, everyone is doing this.

And, of course, if you look at my post, I never stated any sort of opinion about priests abusing children even though you have unsuccessfully tried to make it appear that way.

All abuse in any setting is wrong and the abusers need to be taken out of situations where they can abuse others. I take offense at you trying to accuse me of something I didn't do.

[wolfcreek]

Well. I was just going to read the responses and move along.

However, our children are not Right or Left, they’re just our children and they’re being abused by people they have been told to trust.

Hiding behind a religion to abuse children is somehow more disgusting than having it done by a teacher or coach.

[tiki]

No one is hiding behind religion to abuse children, these cases that they are talking about happened decades ago and the Catholic Church has taken steps to prevent it ever happening again. They do it by education and openness. To do anything but go to Mass you must have a background check and attend several classes.

The deal with the public schools goes on as we speak and I don’t hear the NYTs saying a word, do you?

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

LOL!

Great response!

[DBrow]

The priest abuse issue is 80% political. It broke in Massachusetts just before the courts and Romney legalized homosexual marriage. I don’t imagine that it was coincidence that the power of the church in MA was given a serious whack right at that opportune time.

The Roman Catholic Church, being global, and having definite right-wrong standards, is a threat to global socialism with the attendant moral relativism the left requires- this is Orwell’s Doublethink.

So they become a target.