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a small percentage of the overall number of priests did account for a majority of the cases. According to a study conducted by John Jay College in 2002, about four percent of the population of American priests were named in accusations between 1950 and 2002. And a smaller percentage of that four percent were named multiple times. Way worse than the general pop, obviously, but still a pretty small part of the entire priestly class.

Philip Jenkins and several other sociologists have studied and noted that, although the data are sketchy, the evil of child sexual abuse was possibly even more widespread in public schools. Many legal and institutional factors made it much easier ( and more lucrative!), however, to get the Church’s criminal actors than those in other settings dealing with children where abuse often occurs.

Not to say the Church didn’t deserve to feel the full force of the law. Peds need to be locked up and those who enable them need to be held accountable. But it is hard not to see a certain cynicism in the legal and media focus on the one setting of institutional abuse


Link: Jenkins on priest abuse cases