Author(s): L. Martin Nussbaum
Published: 02/05/2009
Welcome to MarciWorld, where legislation can stop the sexual abuse of children. Marci Hamilton, a Yeshiva University law professor, describes her book, Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children, as "a how-to book on stopping child abuse, empowering survivors, and helping society identify child predators." The answer, Hamilton claims, "is straightforward and attainable: eliminate SOLs"—statutes of limitation, in other words, both for criminal prosecution of sexual perpetrators and for civil damage suits against them and their employers.
In Child Maltreatment 2006, a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we're told that around 66 percent of those who sexually abuse children are parents, other relatives, unmarried partners of parents, friends, or neighbors, and that only 0.5 percent are "professionals." And clergy are a subset of "professionals," and Catholic priests are a subset of clergy. Neither Child Maltreatment 2006 nor any other study identifies clergy (much less Catholic priests) as a statistically significant class of perpetrators. Statistically insignificant and taken from years and decades past, cases of abuse involving Catholic clergy—though profoundly troubling—are nonetheless few compared to the cases involving, for example, public-school teachers.
Thus, for example, in both actual numbers and percentages, sexual abuse of children by teachers, coaches, and employees in public schools exceeds anything that occurred in Catholic institutions. Furthermore, in contrast to Catholic institutions, sexual abuse of children in public schools is still occurring in significant numbers. Prof. Carol Shakeshaft, an expert cited by Hamilton, told Education Week, "So we think the Catholic Church has a problem? . . . The physical sexual abuse of students in [public] schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
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Permission to post granted by First Things, Februrary 6, 2009.