Posted on 12/02/2007 11:50:04 AM PST by NYer
NEW YORK — When the Associated Press set out to investigate an apparent problem with sexual assault of children in public schools, the organization spared no expense.
A congressionally mandated study by Hofstra University had already found school-based sexual abuse to be a big problem.
“It was one of our priorities for the year,” said John Affleck, editor of the AP’s national reporting team.
The result was a three-part series, available to editors throughout the country beginning Oct. 20, that revealed widespread and routine sexual assault of public school students throughout the country.
The first story summarized: “Students in America’s schools are groped. They’re raped. They’re pursued, seduced and think they’re in love.”
The series told of an entrenched resistance to stopping abusers on the part of teachers, administrators and the National Education Association, a teacher’s union.
So why apparently have only a handful of newspapers nationwide run the series — in stark contrast to the avalanche of press received by the Catholic Church since 2002?
Paul Colford, corporate communications director for the AP, said he was inundated with complaints from people wondering why their newspapers were not carrying the series.
The AP’s investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions “from bizarre to sadistic.” It said that on any given day, three educators are actively “hitting on” students, thus speaking to “a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.”
It quoted a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating school abuse, saying that every school district in the country likely hosts at least one sex abuser.
By contrast, the series pointed out, over a 52-year period, some 4,400 priests were “accused” of molestation.
“I received inquiries from readers who were frustrated,” Colford said. “They had heard about the story and couldn’t find it in some cases. In other instances, their local paper had carried one part of the series, but not the rest of it.”
Colford said most who complained about an inability to find the stories were academics, psychologists, lawyers, social workers and professional researchers. Colford said AP officials have no accurate process for determining which newspapers ran part or all of the series, short of embarking on a research project.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue complained in early November that the AP’s member newspapers were ignoring the story, even though they routinely run stories about decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by priests. He conducted a search of Nexis, a central database for newspapers to archive articles. Two weeks after the series was released, Donohue found, the search indicated that only five newspapers carried the entire series.
“A Nexis search is a very poor indicator of how many papers have published a story,” Colford said, explaining that publications have different timelines and processes for filing their stories, and some never file wire copy.
Affleck, who is defensive of his team’s series, said he was confident it received satisfactory play in the nation’s press. He had no data to back the claim, but shuffled through clippings of the story in an effort to show the Register that newspapers have published it.
He said his own research revealed that the series had been promoted with a teaser in 90 newspapers on the day it was released.
By contrast, newspapers throughout the country — nearly all of them — obsessed over the Boston Globe “Spotlight” stories, carried by AP, about sexual abuse by priests in one diocese that mishandled the reports.
Martin Nussbaum, a Colorado Springs-based attorney who has represented Boston and other dioceses in sex abuse-related cases, conducted research of stories regarding old allegations of sex abuse in the Church.
“The Boston Globe began publishing on Jan. 6, 2002, a series of reports regarding sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston,” Nussbaum wrote “In a flash, newspapers around the country began reprinting the Globe’s reports and developing their own. They published 728 stories in January; 1,095 in February, and 2,961 in March. By April, these papers were publishing a new story every nine minutes, 160 every day, 4,791 for the month. By year-end, American papers provided their readers over 21,000 stories of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.”
Boston Globe editors contacted by the Register claimed only vague knowledge of the AP series, and could not answer as to whether part of it ran in their paper.
“I think we may have handled pieces of it, but I’m really not sure,” said Jim Smith, the Globe’s political editor. “I’ll look into it.”
A library employee, who would identify himself only as “Mark,” agreed to search a database of Globe content. He said he’d be surprised to find the AP’s report.
“We don’t run much wire copy,” Mark said. “We would likely do our own story.”
On Nov. 15, more than three weeks after the AP’s series became available, Mark found only one story containing the phrase “sexual abuse.” But the story had nothing to do with the public school system. Rather, the story — wire copy originating at the Los Angeles Times — was about sexual assault in the Catholic Church.
The story told how “multimillion dollar financial settlements reached with victims of priest sexual abuse have created new financial stresses for Catholic schools.”
Patrick Chappell, a 19-year-old freshman at Loyola University in Chicago, was molested as a high school student by the former president of the Estes Park, Colo., school district. His family fled the town and enrolled him in a Catholic school when public school teachers and a coach showed open hostility toward the family for turning in the abuser. The perpetrator, while free on bond, was forbidden from being near minors.
“I remember there was this reception in the school for one of his friends, and he showed up,” Chappell said. “There were minors all over the place, and he was there despite the court order that said to stay away from kids. Everyone knew who he was. He was Mr. Estes Park, a pillar of the community.”
After taking refuge at a Catholic school in suburban Boulder, Chappell began speaking to children at public schools in Denver.
“I spoke to raise awareness about this problem, because if I had been told about it this wouldn’t have happened to me,” Chappell said. “Never did I speak that a child didn’t come out to me or a guidance counselor as a victim of rape. Not once. In my opinion, the media have a great potential to make parents and children aware of this threat. They should take it. Most children who are raped are not raped by priests.”
Howard Kurtz, a Washington Post writer who’s among the best-known media critics in the country, declined to speak with the Register about the media’s seemingly disparate treatment of sex assault in public schools, as compared to Catholic institutions.
Kurtz wrote in an e-mail: “I’m afraid I’m just not up on the subject. Sorry.”
You no doubt are a product of public education.
When all else fails, try changing the subject with a personal attack.
I agree with you 100%.
News stories about teachers who have sexual relationships with their students or who abuse students, are very common. As this story points out, there have been more than 2,500 proven cases of abuse over a recent five year period. That is 500 cases per year. Yet, the media consistently treats these cases as isolated incidents and not as symptoms of an institutional problem or defect.
Contrast this with the way that the media handled the clerical sex abuse crisis. 4,400 priests have been accused of abusing children over a 52 year period. This number represents 4% of diocesan priests and 2.7% of religious priests. Moreover, the bulk of the accusations were made between 1975 and 1990. That is, the majority of these alleged incidents of abuse occurred more than seventeen years ago; only a small number of cases concern abuse that was committed recently or currently. Yet, the media has treated these cases not as isolated incidents involving a small percentage of the clergy but as
a widespread, institutional problem caused by the Church’s hierarchical structure and its requirement of clerical celibacy. The reaction of the press, of victims’ rights advocates, and of lawyers to this scandal has been nothing short of hysterical. And the enemies of the Church have seized upon it as “proof” that the Church itself is evil.
The fact that these same people seem to be completely unconcerned about the prevalence of sex abuse in the public schools is proof that they are not as concerned about the protection of children and young people as they are about bashing the Church. What hypocrites.
4,400 priests were accused of abusing minors but some of these men have NOT been found guilty. In fact, some of these men are innocent. In this country, one is still presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. But I guess this doesn’t apply to priests.
“Accused” does not mean guilty. Not everyone who is accused of sex crimes is guilty. Some are and some aren’t.
I never said it did, now did I???
I'm hardly one to defend the press, and I freely admit the public schools have problems. But, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are almost 49 million children in the public schools currently. I'd hardly call 500 cases of abuse per year prevalent.
Christ stated that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18). Individual clergy may commit sins, even popes commit sins because in the Church there are both "weeds and wheat" (Matthew 13:30), but the Catholic Church remains without error.
Thanks for posting this.
Presuming a 25-students-to-1-teacher ratio (close to what the NEA desires, but I'm really just trying for simple math here), 500 "accused" cases a year would translate to 1,960,000 public school teachers (or roughly 1.6M if we grant one teacher for every 30 students) - if you have more accurate numbers, please post them!. 500 cases a year, times 50 years (to attempt an apples-for-apples comparison with the Catholics' John Jay Study) gives us 25,000 cases over the last half-century.
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.
Matthew 5:25:
”Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.
The author’s intent was clear. Your understanding of it is not.
No. I was agreeing with the remarks that he made in post #5 about the lack of outrage over the abuse of minors in public schools versus the hysteria surrounding the sex abuse scandal in the Church.
As for his remarks about “A. M.,” why I didn’t even realize that he was talking about you. After all, your criticisms of the Church are always so restrained and so constructive.
Talk about nit picking! Perhaps “prevalence” is the wrong word. However, the sexual abuse of minors in the public schools is not exactly rare or unusual either. Moreover, the media’s lack of interest in this story is puzzling because it was so very concerned and outraged about the clerical sex abuse scandal. There is clearly a double standard here.
Pinging for future comment. Sounds like something we’ve been saying for a LONG time.
Basically it is that the press is not really interested in protecting kids but in discrediting the Catholic Church. The public schools, on the other hand, are a bulwark of liberalism.
The key here is “accusations.” As a former teacher, I can tell you that just as many accusations of priests were hushed up, so too accusation of teachers. The schools responded by encouraging the teacher to leave the district and find employment elsewhere. If he—and it was usually he—went quietly, his file would be cleared. In short, no paper trail. There are some 12,000 school districts in the United States and no real hierarchy. Unless the teacher protested his innocence, no one above the level of the Superintendents’ office would be aware of the matter. Given the constant need for teachers in the United States, the teacher would have no trouble getting job, provided he were willing to travel anywhere.
That's a very good point. IMO it's not the abuse per se, but the hypocracy (of a celibate Catholic priesthood, or a monogamous Protestant pastorate) that keeps the press interested. You'll never find the press covering abuses committed by homosexual and pedophilic organizations, because there's no perceived hypocracy therein. The press doesn't care how many lesbian relationships a "womenpriest" has, because frankly the press already expects that sort of behavior from them. In other words, you can't break a vow that you never made, or one that your beliefs don't require you to keep.
Consider that the government-run public school system is officially amoral and atheistic/polytheistic by law. There is no hypocrisy or outrage at this kind of behavior to be reported, unless the parents' religious morals were violated by the teacher, because the school technically can't have any religious morals to break. The non-Christian population IMO wishes they were in the students' place! Check out the posts on any "teacher abuse" thread. Half of the FReepers post comments akin to "I wish I had that teacher in high school!" whenever one of these stories comes out, if the teacher is deemed physically attractive. Where is the Catholic outrage at those congratulatory comments?
If we can't blame the Vatican for the priest scandals, should we blame the NEA for the school ones?
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