A sweeping study released Wednesday covering 60 years of sexual
abuse
allegations against the U.S. Roman Catholic church identified no
definitive cause for the crisis and proposed changes that would require
radical reforms to its hierarchy.
The 300-page report is the product of five years of work by
researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York
City.
It comes at a time when the Catholic church continues to be rocked
by the trauma of clergy abuse, both in Europe and in the U.S., most
recently in Philadelphia.
Few Catholics are likely to be satisfied by the report. Its findings
undercut some favorite arguments of critics and depict a church
leadership more focused on protecting abusers than helping victims.
Researchers compared American dioceses to insular police departments
that protect corrupt or abusive cops within their ranks.
Many liberal activists have long argued that the church's
reliance on an all-male, celibate priesthood encourages abuse by
providing no outlet for natural sexual desire. For their part,
conservatives like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League link cases of sex
abuse to the growing number of gay priests.
They're both wrong, according to the John Jay researchers.
Incidents of clergy abuse dropped dramatically starting in the 1980s,
even though the celibacy requirement has remained the same. And
researchers note that a rise in the number of gay seminarians and
priests corresponded with "a decreased incidence of abuse - -not an
increased incidence of abuse."
In fact, researchers could not identify any individual
characteristics that formed a profile of an abusive priest after
studying psychological and intelligence test data, and developmental and
sexual histories of abusers. "Individual characteristics did not
predict that a priest would commit sexual abuse of a minor," the
investigators write. "Rather, vulnerabilities, in combination with
situational stresses and opportunities, raise the risk of abuse."
Those situational stresses, the report concludes, included vast
social changes and shifting sexual mores in the 1960s and 1970s. "The
increased frequency of abuse" during that period, says lead investigator
Karen Terry, "was consistent with patterns of increased deviance in
society during that time."
As for opportunities, the researchers determined that priests
didn't single out male victims or even young victims. Abusive clergy
were more likely to victimize boys because they were the ones serving as
altar boys, and coming into contact with priests through parochial
schools and recreational activities. As with prison rape, the aggressors
weren't necessarily gay because their victims were of the same sex.
They just chose the weakest and most available prey.
This explanation is already roiling influential Catholics. In an interview with the New York Times,
Donohue accused the report's authors of "go[ing] through all sorts of
contortions to deny the obvious -- that obviously, homosexuality was at
work."
Abuse victim advocates are also suspicious of the findings; they
note that the church has blamed the abuse crisis on the era of Free Love
and Hippies in the past. And they question whether the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops, which covered half of the $1.8 million cost of the
study, had any influence over its findings.
There is some good news in the report. It concludes that the
church did take steps that led to a sharp decline in abuse cases over
the past few decades. The most significant change was a reform of
seminary training to better prepare future priests for a life of
celibacy.
The report's ultimate recommendation will sound familiar to
anyone who has studied an institution in crisis: enact uniform policies
that encourage transparency and accountability.
But this is the American
Catholic church, in which each bishop runs his diocese largely free
from scrutiny or oversight.
Just last week, the head of the Philadelphia
Archdiocese's in-house review board publicly complained that church
leaders had been selective in handing over sex abuse allegations rather
than allowing the board to sift through every complaint.
Perhaps
the best evidence that church reforms are still far off came on Monday
when the Vatican issued new guidelines for bishops to consult when
dealing with sex abuse cases.
The guidelines are voluntary, meaning
bishops will continue to have the final say over all matters within
their individual dioceses.
The bishop remains king, reporting only to
the Pope and God.