Here is one for you Dominic: You are safer with a Roman Catholic Priest than with a secular Public School Teacher.

Comparison of abuse in the Catholic Church and U.S. public schools:

A U.S. Department of Education report issued in 2004 examined a number of American studies into the prevalence of sexual misconduct by school staff. They found that between 3.5% and 50.3% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career. They found that teachers, coaches, substitute teachers were the most common offenders.

If this report is accurate, then sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic church, and by other clergy, appears to pale in comparison with the abuse being experienced by children and youths in the public schools. 16

http://www.religioustolerance.org/clergy_sex8.htm


Adding in your own rather odd multiplication, should we presume that 503% of public school teachers are sex offenders? ;-)

@DHJ - that same 90% unreported also applies to non-priest abuse, meaning that 20% of the population is sex offenders by your logic. I'll let you find the flaw in 1 in 5 people being sex offenders. 90% of rape cases are never solved. Does that mean there are 10 times more rapists on the street than in prison? Hint: it has to do with REPEAT offenders...

You forget that there was a good amount of priest and nun teachers through the last century. :P

Sure there were...... in Catholic schools, but the study was done in public schools in 2004. Any way you cut it 2.7% to 6% is way better than 3.5 to 50%.

Seriously though, there is just no way to know how many people of any vocation are sex offenders. There are too many variables (false accusations, unreported cases, repeat offenders, accquittals, etc.). When it comes down to it there are sex offenders in all vocations. Just because there are might be a very small number of pedophiles in education, medicine, police, and politics does nothing to take away from the good that teachers, doctors, police, and yes even politicians do on a daily basis. It makes one wonder about your motives when such a large number of public school children being molested can be explained away in such a weak fashion, but you seems to consider a very small number of priests being accused (not even indicted much less convicted) a larger issue.

**you seem to consider**

When schools find out about abuse, they report it. When the Catholic Church has found it, they have hidden it. That is problematic when trying to compare statistics. Institutional cover-ups are not always ineffective.

Schools try to handle it as quietly as possible. In my career thus far I know of two men given the choice to give up their job or face legal action. This is not exactly reporting it. School systems have different policies for dealing with instances of sexual misconduct, and not all are as forthcoming as you would like to suppose. I know of one guy in Florida who was caught diddling high school girls, so they moved him down to the middle school and he retired as a middle school teacher.

By the same token the Anglican Mission in the Americas requires anyone working with children to undergo a training session in which exhaustive measures are tset up to make sure that no child is put at risk in their churches. Among the measures are two people (not a husband and wife team) are required in each Sunday School classroom and at each church function involving our kids. Is the program perfect, of course not. It does show that the Church takes the idea very seriously.

Also keep in mind that much less people attend church than public school so if the precentage was the same you would still have more life being affected in public schools than in churches

the whole priest pedophile thing is BS theres like 1 every 2 years. i go to catholic school all my life and catholics are stereotyped by protestants

Which begs the questions why castigate priests when what available data we have indicates that they should be no more suspect than anyone else. It amounts to an appeal to ignorance and outright innuendo. In essence the argument has degraded to "nothing can be proven against priests as a group, but let's keep trying to smear them and the RCC anyway".

so much for bible study, we've moved on to pediphiles, how nice... i think i would rather have you people rambling on about your "holy" texts than about pediphiles. no reason...

11,000 allegations were made. People were asked to leave the Church, up to and including Cardinals. There are multiple large (many millions) settlements being paid out. The Church was sued for the abuse and the cover-up. This isn't a 1 every 2 years thing. Most of the cases and evidence came out in the last 10 years. The cover-up was completely exposed(what of it was) during that time.

Thankfully, during that time, they have made sure that politicians that voted the wrong way on bills were refused communion. Of course, those priests doing the abuse weren't refused. That's all ok though, religious people can rationalize and moralize just about anything. Thank goodness that those of faith give the Church moral superiority in all things.

@Tantris: You fail to realize that God forgives the clergy, but not the politicians. It's in Leviticus.

Exactly what should the number of allegations being made prove? The studies are there; your child is much more likely to encounter a pedophile in a public school than in a church.

There are large multi-million dollar lawsuits that have come about over the years for misconduct over public school systems mishandling the same type of situation as well, and yet that doesn't seem to be as big a problem for you. It just doesn't appear the religious people have exactly cornered the market on rationalizing. How on earth can you justify attacking the RCC and defending the Department of Education for doing pretty much exactly the same thing?

Probably because the Church is supposed to be a moral standard of good behavior. Public school is just public school and its an accepted fact of life that there are sick bastards in everyday life, but my guess is the overall opinion is that those people shouldn't be serving as influential authority figures in an institution like the church.

This is all completely off topic though, as we already made a seperate thread to argue tangents from this thread.

@Crazy, The TPAC is much lower for the school system. As a percentage, the RCC is worse than all of the kids going to school. As a parent, it is safer to send a child to school than to the Roman Catholic Church.

Touch Per Attended Child (TPAC)

You guys are pathetic this thread has become a perversion of what the poster had intended, he asked about bible study, not sex abuse in the church, grow up

@ vamosrammstein

Public school is specifically set up to be a nurturing and safe place for kids. I disagree that it's just an accepted fact for public schools any more than for a church. It is a breach of trust of the highest order to have educators engaging in this type of behavior...period.

@ag
As to the TPAC, I'd be interested to see where you got that figure. Can you cite a source?



Here are a few about the problem in the Public Schools system and how educators abuse repeatedly and get away with it (merely going on to another school system or state).


Coaches who Prey and the system that allows it.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/coaches/news/union.html


http://www.nospank.net/n-r34r.htm

The case of Gary Lindsey is interesting. He admitted to it and went on to another state and had 40 year career in education. In the end it wasn't the system that got him but a determined parent.

@Augustine

Yes you're right. I went so far as to start the other thread for tangetial arguments. I'm not sure why the necessity to argue here. I'm merely responding to some absurd statements that should not have been made in this thread to begin with. There are two other debate threads going on right now.

Fuck everything and everyone. There done with this and any other possible debates in this thread. GET BACK ON TOPIC MOTHA FUCKAS!

QFT! .....efc

If you're Catholic a few Hail Marys can never go amiss. Go for a full decade if you want the reputation of being one devout hardass.

@ag7433: You said "You fail to realize that God forgives the clergy, but not the politicians. It's in Leviticus.". So, we should allow the clergy to do whatever they wish, and always forgive and cover up for them? It is too bad we have two classes in the world, in god's eye.

@Tantirs: It was a joke.

I was a reverend once,lol then I ate my congregation....they were carrots. ZEBRA!! Sooo i think god forgives me, right tantriS?

@ZaZa

"Four people were there including me. Going to hold another next week. Hopefully word will spread by then."

That's great Zaza. How did it go? What did you end up discussing?

It was short and to the point. We talked about the fellowship of believers.

What are you going to follow up with? WIll you continue with fellowship or move on to other topics?