Seriously, that seems to be the message from a study that was commissioned (and largely funded) by the church.
The sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church was caused by the influence of sweeping social changes and increasing “deviant behavior’’ of the 1960s and 1970s on priests who were inadequately trained, emotionally unprepared, and isolated, according to a new report commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops…. The report, titled “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,” appears to deflect most blame for the crisis away from the church. However, the study acknowledges that there was little evidence before 2002 “that diocesan leaders met directly with victims.’’ Instead, church leaders focused on the abusive priests rather than on their victims.
And here’s an especially sad part:
Abusive priests have often been branded pedophiles, but the report — in a declaration that appears destined to stir controversy — insists that fewer than 5 percent actually met that definition. In the process, however, the study’s authors seem to redefine what constitutes pedophilia.
Major associations of psychiatrists typically define pedophilia as interest in children 13 and younger, calling them “prepubescent.’’
But to reach their conclusion about the low incidence of the disorder among priests, the report authors seem to suggest that the prepubescent period ends at age 10.
“The majority of victims were pubescent or postpubescent,’’ the report states. “Thus,’’ they wrote, “it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as pedophile priests.’’
Wow.
“The study seems to focus on the offending priests in a way that minimizes the gravity of their crimes, and gives short shrift to the ‘other crime’ — the enabling, concealing, and fostering of abuse by the US bishops and the Vatican bureaucracy,’’ said Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, in a statement on news reports concerning the leaked study last night.
Um, yeah.
hesterprynne says
Catholics have been fond of invoking Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s term “defining deviancy down” to express their opposition to gay marriage, among other ills of modernity.
So maybe it’s not a surprise that they have come up with a cover story for clergy abuse that gives the term its most literal meaning ever: deviancy has been defined down from 13 years to 10.
JHM says
. . . is more or less in the eye of the beholder.
I am struck most by how the perps seem to have given up on their primary mission, as if it would be very unreasonable of somebody to expect them to prevail over the World, the Flesh, &c. instead of vice-versa.
Happy days.
petr says
The report isn’t strong enough in its deflection to make so clear a statement preferring a bloodless vaguery that belies it’s age (it was initially commissioned in 2004 as the “why “half of a dual study. The “what” portion was completed in 2004.) The blame for ‘hippies’ is merely an allusion ginned up by the press.
My first reading of the executive summary, and a skim of the entire report, suggests a confused mix of the general (culture is bad, the sixties culture really bad) and the specific (excruciating attempts to make exact the length and breadth of both abuse and the follow on attempts to map the exact distance between when the worst happened and when the bishops first knew about it… and then further attempts to obfuscate the distance between when the bishops knew and when they acted.) Reading the summary reminded me of an alcoholic I once knew of who denied being an alcoholic because each drink she took was carefully and precisely measured. She couldn’t possibly be out of control, she maintained, if she so carefully measured out ounce and a half dosages thirty or forty times a day. She, too, was an artful practitioner of justification by carefully moving between the general and specific.
Most perplexing, the report simultaneously acknowledges ‘a substantial increase in knowledge and understanding \[\] about victimization and the harm of child sexual abuse ‘ while making an implicit argument that no significant priest abused of a child occurred prior to 1950. The report says, specifically:
If this is true, and I have little doubt that it is, there is no basis whatsoever to claim an understanding of pre-revelation norms; Thus the terms ‘peak’ and ‘decline’ have little meaning and less justification. It’s equally as likely that revelation of a long established pattern of abuse caused the decline, than the decline being the downward slope of a statistically anomalous ‘surge’ of bad behavior. Or, conversely, the new understanding of victimization may have finally given societal permission to those most hurt, enabling them to actually claim victimization and thus proffer charges. Either may be the case but this report provides no evidence for the one scenario it ultimately endorses over those scenarios it completely discounts.