A study commissioned four years ago by the US Roman Catholic Church has found gay priests are no more likely to abuse children than straight priests.While the study won’t be published until next year, researchers told a meeting of Roman Catholic bishops they had found no evidence that sexual orientation was a factor in child abuse, the Associated Press reports.
The study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was begun after a widespread sex abuse scandal rocked the US church in 2002.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops wanted to know if gay priests were more likely to abuse, because in the thousands of cases going back decades, the majority of victims were boys.
When asked whether homosexuals should be excluded from the priesthood, John Jay researcher Margaret Smith replied: “If that exclusion were based on the fact that that person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”
In 2005 the Vatican issued an order that men who were attracted to other men should not be ordained priests.
Another John Jay researcher, Karen Terry warned “It's important to separate the sexual identity and the behaviour. Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature but not have a homosexual identity.”
She added that one reason more boys were abused than girls was that historically offenders had easier access to boys than girls.
Some 14,000 abuse claims have been made against Catholic priests since 1950.
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