Re: How does abuse by Catholic and Protestant compare?

I am not dismissing or in denial of this horrendous crime, but this was interesting:


What the media often says, compared with reality:

During the first few months of 2002, revelations of pedophelia, ephebophilia and hebephilia among some priests in the Roman Catholic church spread like wildfire across the U.S. The media gave the impression that:

Most of the abusing priests were pedophiles -- molesting little children. Actually, most of the criminal acts were by hebephiles -- engaging in sexual activity with post-pubertal, 13 to 17 year old young men.

That many priests abuse children. Actually, there is general agreement that only a few percentage of the clergy abuse; much more than 90% of the Roman Catholic clergy are either celibate or discretely engage in sexual behavior with other adults.

A massive amount of abuse is now going on in the Roman Catholic church. The data that appears in the media often reflects allegations of abuse which have accumulated over the past forty years. The number of cases involving allegations of recent abuse will be a small fraction of the total that is now being reported.

Priests abuse at a per-capita rate that is much greater than for the general population. This is probably true, even if for no other reason that all Roman Catholic priests are currently male, and adult males have a much higher abuse rate than females.

The percentage of Roman Catholic priests who abuse children and youths is much greater than for other Christian and non-Christian religious leaders (gurus, imams, ministers, pastors, priests, priestesses, rabbis, etc.). This may or may not be true. No reliable data exists. Even as media articles in the first few months of 2002 highlighted abuse by priests within the Catholic Church, a former Episcopal priest was convicted of molesting a 14-year-old boy, a Baptist pastor from South Carolina was starting a 60 year prison center for molesting 23 children, another Baptist pastor was dismissed from his church in upstate New York over allegations of abuse, a pastor in DeKalb, GA, was found guilty of 25 charges of molestation of a male teen-aged church member, and an Orthodox rabbi was about to go on trial for groping two teenage girls.



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