Key facts about the Catholic priest scandal the Media won't tell you

With the Catholic priest abuse scandal in the news again, someone needs to list key facts that the media never tell us about. The best studies I've seen on the subject have been produced by a John Jay College (CUNY) research team.

1. The abuse epidemic started in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, and has fallen off dramatically since. Have you noticed how the victims you've seen interviewed are typically people in their 50s? Most victims didn't come forward until decades had passed since their abuse.

2. The researchers point to the liberal sexual culture of the 60s and 70s to help explain the epidemic. They hypothesize that the behavior of priests and the soft response reflected the broader culture.

3. Over the 60 year period of the study, four percent of priests were accused of sexual abuse. This is the same prevalence typically seen among institutions that care for kids. The prevalence peaked in the 60s and the 70s, fell sharply in the 80s, and has remained at a much lower level. Media and law enforcement attention has been inversely correlated with the problem.

4. Most of the accused priests were accused of a single instance of abuse. Chronic, repeat offenders  were less common, so the prevalence of hardcore predators is much less than 4%.

5. The typical victim was a 12-14 year old boy.  Many older teen boys were also victims. Seminarians were also sexually assaulted by priests.  Girls are typically at greatest risk of sexual abuse, but this has been a male-targeted phenomenon.

The Church should have turned all credible accusations over to law enforcement and should have advocated that offenders rot in jail. Offenders should never have been reassigned and given access to children again.  That is the conservative approach to pedophilia, but the Church, like all major institutions, is not conservative. These people didn't seem to believe that human nature is fallen and prone to depravity.

Since humans are by nature sinners, and men especially so with respect to sexual matters, why would you ever have a policy of allowing men to be alone with children?

Instead, you see a problem that happens all the time in male professions, say, with police, for example: men go easy on their buddies when they act in unacceptable ways. And priests could conveniently fall back on Christian forgiveness and liberal approaches to treating pedophiles to rationalize going easy on buddies.

Priests tell us they will be judged by God more harshly than the rest of us, and I certainly hope they will be because no atheist could ever damage the Church like these priests have done.

And, of course, elites and the Media are salivating over this story since what could be more damaging to the Institution That Is the Embodiment of All That is Evil? (Of course, the liberal Francis is softening them up a bit.)

Homosexuality caused by imprinting?

Evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup has an interesting (if controversial) theory about the origin of both homosexuality and homophobia. I'm unconvinced, but what do I know?  He claims that the orientation is caused (at least in part) by early imprinting. He cites a study (Van Wyk and Geist, 1984) that revealed that males are much more likely to become homosexual if their first masturbation experience is in the presence of another male.

Gallup then suggests that man-boy contact is not uncommon. He refers to another study which found that 80 percent of homosexuals admit to having sex with minors (Goode and Troiden 1980) and that homosexual pedophiles average many more victims (150) than heterosexual pedophiles (20) (Abel et al., 1987). Another study (Cameron, 1985) estimated that homosexuals are 90 to 100 times more likely to become sexually involved with their students than are heterosexuals (I know mainstream researchers hate Cameron).  The rate of recidivism among convicted homosexual pedophiles is also approximately twice that of their heterosexual counterparts (American Psychiatric Association 1994).

Gallup then reports on his own study (unpublished) of adult homosexuals. One out of four gay men had their first homosexual experience (which typically occurs during early adolescence) with a stranger who on average was 15.7 years older than they were. Most of the homosexual males in the sample also reported developing a clear sense of their sexual orientation around the time that they had their first homosexual experience.

Early same-sex experiences also happen with peers, according to Gallup (but he leaves out abuse among minors). 

While this theory alone is a shock, he seems to present it in order to set up the question he is more interested in: why homophobia?  Why are many heteros uncomfortable with homosexuality, while homosexuals don't seem to have an aversion to straights? 

More specifically, why do people fear leaving their children with gay men?  He then hypothesizes that, according to evolutionary theory, parents have a keen interest in the future fertility of their children, and will protect them from anything that would undermine their motivation to reproduce.

Gallup claims that people intuit a connection between homosexual contact and a child's sexual orientation. According to his research, people are much less comfortable with scenarios like a homosexual teacher or pediatrician caring for their child than a homosexual fixing their car or performing surgery on them. They are more comfortable with a child being around a homosexual if the child is an adult rather than if he is still a minor. 

I don't buy it (my bias is biological) but I have found that homosexuals are more likely to report sexual contact as children.       


UPDATE: Gene Expression describes twin research that concludes that heritability for homosexuality is roughly 50 percent. Of course, that is only half the story.  


References

Abel, G., Becker, J., Mittelman, M., Cunningham-Rathner, J., Rouleau, J., and Murphy, W. Self-reported sex crimes of nonincarcerated paraphiliacs. Journal oflnterpersonal Violence 2:3-25, 1987.


American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. Washington, DC: APA, 1994.


Cameron, P. Homosexual molestation of children: sexual interaction of teacher and pupil. Psychological Reports 57: 1227-1236, 1985.


Gallup, G.G., Jr. Have attitudes toward homosexuals been shaped by natural selection? Ethology and Sociobiology 16: 53-70, 1995.


Goode, E., and Troiden, R.R. Correlates and accompaniments of promiscuous sex among male homosexuals. Psychiatry 43: 51-59, 1980.


Van Wyk, P.H., and Geist, C.S. Psychosocial development of heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual behavior. Archives of Sexual Behavior 13: 505-544, 1984.