Nuns As Sexual Victims Get Little Notice

Already shaken by a yearlong sex abuse scandal involving priests and minors, the Roman Catholic Church has yet to face another critical challenge - how to help thousands of nuns who say they have been sexually victimized.

A national survey, completed in 1996 but intentionally never publicized, estimates that a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.

My Father-in-law's family.......Him, a priest, bailed out after two years, a violent homophobe, drunk, wife beater, child beater, steal anything not nailed down, adulterer.

His sister, a nun of fifteen years, left the order to live with her girlfriend. A real sweet guilt ridden lesbian school teacher.

His brother, a guy who was in the seminary, extremely intelligent, married an ugly woman, had a child, ran off with another man, computer programmer, died of AIDS.

Me......I have no stomach for the Catholic Church any more.

One in eight nuns said she had been sexually exploited. Of those, nearly three of every four maintained she was victimized by a priest, nun or other religious person. The exploitation included everything from pressure for "dates" to requests for sexual favors to sexual intercourse. Two of every five nuns who said they had been sexually exploited said the exploitation involved some form of genital contact.

OK, let's do the arithmetical translation.

1 in 8 nuns said she was "sexually exploited" = 7 of 8 nuns have never been sexually exploited

of that 1/8, 3 of 4 were exploited by a "religious person"=3/32 of nuns were exploited by another nun or priest

2/5 of the exploited nuns underwent some kind of "genital contact"=2/5 x 3/32= 3/80 = 3.75% of nuns say they have experienced sexual exploitation by a priest, nun, or other religious person that involved genital contact

Well, that is 3.75% too many to be sure, but I don't think this story will go quite as far as some people are hoping. BTW, I am not a Catholic.

Hey Mole, I think like you do. I got out the calculator, and did a little number crunching. I've posted another reply to the same article on a different thread, but some of it bears repeating.

The “national study” that is cited makes estimates based on 1,164 surveys returned by nuns. 2,500 surveys were sent out. More than half were never returned.

While the authors of the study say they believe the incidence of sexual abuse is probably higher than the survey indicates, common sense would tell you that the women most likely to return an anonymous 15-page survey would be those who had an ax to grind, and those most likely to ignore the survey would be those who had nothing to report. With a survey return rate of less than 50%, it is reasonable to assume that the statistics in the study may be about twice as high as they should be.

But even assuming the statistics are not far off base, this is what the data really says:

• Under 20% of nuns reported some form of sexual abuse during childhood. The majority of them were victims of male family members, just as in the general population. Only 9% of that 20% - which is a grand total of less than 2% - claimed the abuse came at the hands of a priest or other religious.
• Approximately 12.5% of respondents claimed to be victims of sexual exploitation. Three of four of those claimed victimization by priests or other religious, which would be perhaps 9% of respondents. Fewer than half of these victims claimed that the “sexual exploitation” involved some form of genital contact.
• Less than 10% claimed to have been the focus of sexual harassment during their religious life, and only slightly more than half of those said this harassment involved physical contact. (Without looking at the actual study, I can guess that this is roughly 5% of respondents.) Less than half of those reporting harassment (or less than 5% of respondents) claimed that it was at the hands of priests or other religious persons.
• Finally, it appears to me that the claim "34,000 nuns ... or 40% of all nuns” bore sex abuse is based on the notion that each reported incident occurred to a different nun, while it is likely that some respondents reported more than one incident.

Did you all notice several revealing paragraphs:

“The results of the nun survey on abuse seem to be in line with many other surveys of women. National surveys indicate that about 20 percent to 27 percent of all women have been sexually abused as children.”

“The harassment figure for nuns would appear to be lower [than the general public]. In a 1994 Louis Harris and Associates national survey, 31 percent of women claimed to have been harassed at work.”

“[One of the researchers] came across two different studies on sexual harassment. One involved a survey of female Jewish rabbis; the other involved a survey of women in the United Methodist Church. Of the women rabbis, 73 percent said they had been a victim of sexual harassment. Of United Methodist Church women surveyed, 77 percent said they had been sexually harassed.”

It’s clear why this particular study never made headlines: in the end, even with what appear to be inflated figures, it shows Catholic nuns reporting LESS “sexual abuse” than the general population ... and less than that reported by female rabbis or Methodist women in similar studies.

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