Are you saying the Catholic Church has been actually tracking and measuring the "rate of sexual abuse" even farther back than 1981? And that, within the Catholic Church, it was much worse prior to 1981 than it was in 1994??
>> Are you saying the Catholic Church has been actually tracking and measuring the "rate of sexual abuse" even farther back than 1981? And that, within the Catholic Church, it was much worse prior to 1981 than it was in 1994?? <<
No to the first, and yes to second.
In 2003, the US Council of Catholic Bishops released an independent study which collected all the incidents of reported sexual abuse. These included cases as far back as the 1940s. The vast, vast majority of cases were reported in the late 90s or early new millennium, but were of incidents which had taken place decades earlier. The incidents were plotted on a chart, which illustrated that there was a drastic reduction in sexual abuse beginning in 1981.
The scary truth, however, is that the sexual abuse was not a recent problem, but had plagued the church in the 1950s: it was not a result of the radical changes in society that took place in the 1960s. In fact, it's very hard to tell how much of the increase in cases throughout the 1960s and 1970s represents a worsening of the problem, or simply the fact that the culprits were still around to be complained against.
The phenomenon of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is almost the opposite of what is presented in the media. THe truth is that the Church did indeed have a massive problem with pedastery, but that the problem was largely defeated during the reign of John Paul II.
Now the tough question: Did the Church try to and manage to conceal the problem until the righteous elements of the Church had the upper hand in what had to have been an incredible war within the Church?