Bill Donohue assesses the reforms that were authorized ten
years ago when the bishops assembled in Dallas:
Tomorrow the bishops will meet in Atlanta,
ten years after they instituted reforms to combat the sexual abuse of minors.
Though there is room for honest disagreement on why the problem has abated—it
has almost disappeared—it is indisputable that the Catholic Church has the best
record of any institution today regarding this matter, religious or secular. In
the last three years, there has been an average of 7 new credible accusations
made against over 40,000 priests.
Millions of employees and children have gone through programs to combat this
problem. The “zero tolerance” policy that was adopted has won much praise,
though in practice it has had a deleterious impact on the rights of the
accused. Moreover, spurious accusations abound. For example, one week ago today
an allegation was made in Montana
against a nun who was said to fondle a boy in 1943, two years before the end of
World War II.
Two years ago we investigated which entities in the media, education, and
religion had adopted a “zero tolerance” policy for handling cases of sexual
abuse: we found few that did, and none that had anything analogous to the Dallas reforms.
Today attention has turned to the public schools where sexual abuse is still
rampant, as well as to elite private schools such as Horace Mann in the Bronx; the Orthodox Jewish community is currently facing
dozens of cases. Still, it is old cases involving priests that garner most of
the press: in Philadelphia,
Lynne Abraham, the D.A. who started the grand jury hearings over a decade ago,
never once investigated other religions, though she was explicitly asked to do
so. Her bias is palpable.
In all of these institutions, homosexuals account for a disproportionate share
of the abuse, yet it is almost never reported. Even now the media (especially
in Philly) tag Jerry Sandusky as a pedophile, though yesterday his first accuser
identified the former Penn
State coach as a homosexual.