@ehBeth,
Quote:you need to do some more research
Anything for you ehbeth..............
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2010/apr/10040104
In a 2002 study conducted by USA Today, it was determined that of the 234 priests that have been accused of sexual abuse of a minor while serving in the nation's ten largest dioceses, 91 percent of the allegations involved male victims. [1]
The Boston Globe reported similar findings in 2003 saying, "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." [2]
Also noteworthy is research conducted by Dr. Thomas Plante of the Department of Psychology at Santa Clara University who found that 80 - 90 percent of the alleged victims of abuse were post-pubescent adolescent boys - not prepubescent children - meaning that the abusers in these cases "are not pedophiles at all but are ephebophiles" (i.e. they demonstrate a sexual attraction to mid-to-late adolescents). [3]
Now let's consider Ms. Smith's assertion that heterosexual priests are just as likely to commit abuse as homosexual priests. If she is correct, we should expect the ratio of priests accused of abusing post-pubescent females to those accused of abusing post-pubescent males to mirror the demographics of the priesthood as a ratio of heterosexuals to homosexuals.
So, do the researchers at John Jay College really mean to imply that some 90% of the priesthood in the U.S. is homosexual?
The question alone is so preposterous as to border on the offensive, but 9:1 is the ratio of priests accused of abusing adolescent males to those accused of abusing adolescent females. Applying this same ratio to the sexual orientation of the priest population as a whole is simply the logical extension of Ms. Smith's assertion that both groups present an equal risk of abuse.
If, as I assume, Ms. Smith and her colleagues do not mean to imply that homosexual priests outnumber their heterosexual counterparts 9 to 1, it's only common sense to expect the USCCB to demand a plausible explanation for the overwhelming preponderance of male victims.
Karen Terry, a colleague of Ms. Smith who also addressed the USCCB assembly, may have preempted questions concerning the small percentage of female victims when she cautioned the bishops, "Even though there was sexual abuse of many boys, that doesn't necessarily mean that the person had a homosexual identity."
"It's important to separate the sexual identity and the behavior," she continued. "Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature but not have a homosexual identity."
Excuse me? If researchers don't consider an adult male's sexual attraction to a teenaged boy a flashing neon sign for homosexuality, then I'm not entirely sure I want to know what they do consider proof.
Undaunted in their effort to explain the homosexual connection away, however, Ms. Terry said that greater access to boys is one of the reasons for the skewed ratio of male victims, and Ms. Smith even went so far as to raise the analogy of homosexual activity among prison populations as supporting evidence.
One cannot help but be outraged by this transparent attempt to gloss over the obvious link between homosexuality and the incidence of clergy sexual abuse, but far more troubling than this is the fact that the USCCB should have known that this is exactly what it was going to get even before it earmarked $1 Million for the John Jay back study in 2005.
Writing in First Things Magazine in 2004, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus made the following observation:
"In its report and its February 27 presentation, the John Jay team was manifestly nervous about the homosexuality factor. The woman making the slide presentation at the National Press Club skipped over the data on adolescent males in a nanosecond. A perhaps jaundiced network reporter remarked afterwards about the downplaying of the homosexuality factor, 'Remember that the John Jay people have to go back and get along in New York City.'" [4]
In that same article, Fr. Neuhaus said that the USCCB's very own Nation Review Board had also made note of the problem:
"The John Jay report notes that the proportion of victims who were male increased in the 1960s and reached 86 percent in the '70s, remaining there through the 1980s. In a footnote, the NRB report responds to the frequent obscuring of the homosexual factor by reference to 'ephebophilia.' The authors write, 'The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (IV) does not recognize ephebophilia as a distinct disorder. Ephebophilia is thus not a disorder in the technical sense, but rather a newly coined descriptive term for homosexual attraction to adolescent males.'" [ibid
