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16 July 2007
Radio 3AW's Derryn Hinch sinks to new depths with his anti-Catholic bigotry
I hardly ever listen to 3AW's Derryn Hinch. The rhetoric and the ideological blindness have not changed all these years. He's like a stuck record. But this afternoon, taking a break from other writing tasks, I turned on the radio to hear Hinch say that it may be easier to count the Catholic priests in America that aren't paedophiles. This is in response to the news reports that the Catholic Church in California is paying out US$660 million to more than 500 victims of priests, going back to the 1950s.
He then called his (contracted) correspondent in America, Richard Arnold, to comment. Arnold rose to the task, saying that 220 priests were involved and at some time they were in seventy-five percent of all parishes, the conclusion on surface being that three-quarters of Catholic parishes were continually infested by paedophile priests.
Well, one may say LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS. Arnold neglected, of course, to say that the period spans fifty odd years - a little point that makes a big difference. The session with Arnold illustrated Hinch's malice and prejudice towards Catholics and the Catholic Church. But let's look at some independent surveys from people who are more concerned with investigating the actual circumstances and not bent on airing their prejudices.
According to a survey by the Washington Post, over the last four decades, less than 1.5 percent of the estimated 60,000 or more men who have served in the Catholic clergy have been accused of child sexual abuse. According to a survey by the New York Times, 1.8 percent of all priests ordained from 1950 to 2001 have been accused of child sexual abuse. Thomas Kane, author of Priests are People Too, estimates that between 1 and 1.5 percent of priests have had charges made against them. Of contemporary priests, the Associated Press found that approximately two-thirds of 1 percent of priests have charges pending against them.
Almost all the priests who abuse children are homosexuals. Dr. Thomas Plante, a psychologist at Santa Clara University, found that “80 to 90% of all priests who in fact abuse minors have sexually engaged with adolescent boys, not prepubescent children. Thus, the teenager is more at risk than the young altar boy or girls of any age.”
The situation in Boston, the epicenter of the scandal, is even worse. According to the Boston Globe, “Of the clergy sex abuse cases referred to prosecutors in Eastern Massachusetts, more than 90 percent involve male victims. And the most prominent Boston lawyers for alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse have said that about 95 percent of their clients are male.”
In a database analysis of reports on more than 1,200 alleged victims of priests identified by USA Today, 85 percent were males. In another study by USA Today, it was determined that of the 234 priests who have been accused of sexual abuse of a minor while serving in the nation’s 10 largest dioceses and archdioceses, 91 percent of their victims were males.
Much has been made of a survey done by the Dallas Morning News which claims that two-thirds of the nation’s bishops have allowed priests accused of sexual abuse to continue working. But the problem with the survey is its definition of abuse—it includes everything from “ignoring warnings about suspicious behavior” to “criminal convictions.” Thus, the survey is of limited utility.
This information is contained in a much longer report:
Sexual Abuse in Social Context: Catholic Clergy and Other Professionals,
a special report by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights:
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