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Wow. You even post your invective against the Catholics in a thread critical of the Protestants. You don’t stop. But nice try to point the floodlights in the other direction.

The article reads that there are upwards of 260 reports of sex abuse in the protestant churches per year. In the Catholic church, however, the article points out that there has been 13,000 cases of child molestation since 1950. Whipping out the ole calculator and figuring out the average per annum for the Catholic Church reveals 232 cases per year (13,000/56).

Oh, but those doing the fact gathering must be papists right? Or the supposed victims of the Protestants are liars?

Forget for the moment that your "ole calculator" is completely useless when you feed it bad data, and agreeing that the sex abuse problem is not limited to any single religious body, it is apparent we have no complete and accurate numbers to work with.

I suspect there are very few Insurance Companies which handle the vast majority of insurance needs of all the Churches in the United States. (We see three companies covering most Protestant Churches. Probably fewer, or not many more, handle the Catholic Churches).

The surest way to determine the incidences and payouts is to find the premiums charged to these various Churches.

I pinged IMRight because I thought he might, with his vast knowledge and contacts, might be able to find these numbers. (Hi IM, how have you been?) :-)

In any event I believe the cost of insurance is a much better indicator of "incidences" and "payouts" than any of the articles thus far presented.

Can anyone help?

it is apparent we have no complete and accurate numbers to work with.

The only "complete" numbers I'm aware of are those provided by the U.S. Catholic Bishops' National Review Board, which collected data from 195 of the 202 dioceses in the USA, and showed that 95 percent of the dioceses and approximately 60 percent of religious communities had at least one case of sexual abuse over a 52 year period. It is an extraordinary study because it's not based on a statistical sampling, but rather on a comprehensive survey documenting responses for 97% of the Catholic diocesan priesthood.

There are simply no similar (comprehensive) studies available for other religious denominations or congregations; existing "studies" that I know of are either derived from statistical samplings (inclusive of non-clergy staff and unpaid volunteers, i.e. a broader range than just paid clergy), or are unqualified reports using unverifiable raw numbers. Of course, there may be something better out there that I'm not aware of.

Overall, I think using this "insurance claim" method may prove problematic to "match up" with the John Jay Study, but it's a much better start than what's been provided up until now.

I pinged IMRight because I thought he might, with his vast knowledge and contacts, might be able to find these numbers. (Hi IM, how have you been?) :-)

I've been doing quite well and hope you are as well.

I don't have the kind of data you seem to be asking for... but I don't need it. I can give you the answer to the underlying question... and quite easily.

The Body of Christ... the Church Militant if you will... is made up of men... and therefore sinners. And no flavor of sin is exempted just because someone is saved... and especially because of what flavor of Christian he calls himself.

If it's a really big church (say... a billion+ members), there are going to be thousands upon thousands of these kinds of horrendous examples every year. If it's just the church down the street with 200 members... it could be many years between examples.

But the result is the same. If you look to the denomination and say "this is the 'correct' one and is closer to God - so I won't have to worry about ever dealing with a pastor falling to sexual sin", then you are just fooling yourself.