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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Schoener says that in his practice he sees six times more female (both adolescent and adult) than male victims of abuse from priests. But because the cases that make headlines usually involve boys, the public is being misled about the scope of the problem, he says.
The few cases litigated in public tend to involve a small minority of priest sexual predators who have numerous victims. In most cases, however, Schoener says, only one or two victims surface and the church settles quietly out of the public eye. He estimates that 98 percent of all priest sex cases are settled out of court.
"The sexual abuse of a boy is treated far more seriously, and is considered a far worse offense than girls or women, and there's no comparison," Schoener says, referring to public opinion evident in press coverage and jury verdicts. "The big damage awards go to the boy cases," he says.
Not only has media coverage created the impression that the typical abuse scenario involves pedophilic priests abusing little boys, but the church itself has strongly suggested that the culprits are homosexuals. Vatican spokesman Navarro-Valls earlier this month said the church recommended that seminaries reject all gays and declared the ordinations of gay priests "invalid," suggesting that a gay man who becomes a priest is like a gay man who marries a woman who is unaware of his orientation. Because the church would annul such a marriage, the ordination of a gay man might be viewed as similarly invalid, he says.
Schoener became irate at the church's suggestion that the abuse stemmed from homosexual priests: "Any such statement that links homosexuality to these cases is bullshit. That's outrageous. They are playing on homophobia. It's a perfect group to nail. And it's also deflecting an attack on them."
Dr. Frederick Berlin, an expert on pedophilia and a member of the Catholic Church's newly appointed commission to investigate priest sexual abuse, says he thinks there are probably more male victims than female. But he isn't sure, and says it's possible that Schoener "may be absolutely right," since the church has delivered no concrete documentation. "Different people are seeing different things. What we really need is some kind of systematic look at the abuse in its totality in order for us to be really confident."
But A.W. Richard Sipe, a Catholic priest turned therapist who has written three books on priests, sex and celibacy and often testified on behalf of victims, says Schoener is right in saying that the majority of priest victims are female. He bases much of his research on personal interviews with priests who have been sexual abusers -- 129, at last count.
Most of those female victims, Sipe points out, are adult women. Among adolescents and children, Sipe believes, based on his own research, that boys are victimized by priests four times more than girls. He says that is in marked contrast with statistics in the general population, where girls are three times more often sexually victimized than boys.
Those figures can be somewhat misleading, he says, because girls tend to underreport abuse by priests. "Girls fall in love with boys and older men. So to be loved or involved with an older man, a priest, doesn't strike girls as inconsistent with their psychosexual attractions," he says. "That doesn't mean it's not abuse." When a boy is molested, however -- especially because of the church's own stance against homosexuality -- he is more likely to know that what has been done is wrong, and to report it.
It's also worth noting that when priests prey upon adult women, it violates their vows of celibacy as well as the trust between priest and parishioner but, in most cases, it's not illegal. It's more like when a therapist seduces a patient: It's a breach of trust to be avoided, certainly, but not the same kind of outrage as child sexual abuse. The number of young boys molested by priests understandably gets more attention, because it plays on parents' worst fears -- that children will be harmed by trusted caregivers -- and often leaves lasting scars.
