Replies

First of all, I’m not complaining about this story being reported. It’s newsworthy. But if I can hear in the media about EVERY priest involved in abuse or some other scandal, why shouldn’t I hear about “some teacher, or nondescript preacher of a 30 member congregation” involved in such situations? I don’t take any pleasure in hearing about the falls of Christian ministers, but the media’s selective reporting makes it appear that abuse occurs at a higher percentage inside the Catholic Church than in other Christian denominations and that’s just not true. The abuse problem is at least ten times, maybe even hundred times worse in the public school system than in the Catholic Church. But you’d never know it from watching the media.

I think they do report everything, but since most of it isn’t a part of a single organization, or in this case, a single denomination, under a single authority, then it doesn’t get treated the same.

A teacher in small town Idaho, and a teacher in Utica New York, aren’t both at the same school system, under a Pope.

...the media’s selective reporting makes it appear that abuse occurs at a higher percentage inside the Catholic Church than in other Christian denominations and that’s just not true. The abuse problem is at least ten times, maybe even hundred times worse in the public school system than in the Catholic Church.

You mean to say that 400% of all public school teachers have been accused of abuse in the last 50 years, and that 6600% of all public school officials were complicit in covering up for the 400%?

While 25,000 hypothesized "accusations" is roughly six times the number of Catholic "accusations", 25,000 cases out of 1,600,000 teachers gives us a 1.3 to 1.56% ratio of sexually abusive teachers out of the entire public school system over a fifty year period - more than twice the volume of Protestant pastoral abuse, and less than half the volume of Catholic priest abuse.
If we're after equal treatment in the media, I would expect there to be at least double the number of Catholic news stories as Public School stories, and four times as many Catholic news stories as Protestant news stories based on the percentage of perverts that exist with their respective organizations. IMO the disproportionate amount of coverage is the result of increased interest, when those organizations are caught protecting the abusers at the expense of the victims.
-- Alex Murphy, April 2, 2008, on the thread Sins, secrets and denial