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.
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.
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.