NEW YORK (CNS) – Many news stories about the recently released report on “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010” tried – and failed – to capture its complex findings in a sound bite, according to the principal investigator for the study.
Karen Terry of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York said researchers who prepared the report have received “malicious and even threatening calls and letters” from some people who criticised the findings based on overly simplistic and sometimes factually inaccurate news reports.
Writing on 23 June in The Crime Report, an online publication of the Centre on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay and the Criminal Justice Journalists organisation, Terry said some media wrongly said the report attributed the clergy sex abuse crisis to social attitudes attributed to Woodstock or the “swinging ‘60s.”
Instead the report concluded that “the factors associated with the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church were complex,” she said. “Another fallacy contained in the early media reports included the ‘fact’ that we did not address the problematic actions of the Bishops,” Terry wrote. “Critics suggested that since we relied only on data from the dioceses, the Bishops influenced the study findings.”
But she said the data in the report came from “seven unique sources – a fact overlooked in most media reports.
The data were derived from Bishops and priests, victim assistance coordinators, victim advocates, survivors, clinicians, seminaries, historical and court documents.”
Noting that the study was commissioned by the lay-led National Review Board and not by the Bishops, Terry said “the Bishops did not influence our findings in any way.” She added that she is not Catholic and has never had any personal ties to the Catholic Church.
The John Jay investigator expressed concern that “the one-dimensional headlines have obscured some of the healthy responses” to the report’s findings.
Among these Terry cited serious discussions among academics about the response to sex abuse, actions by the Vatican and the National Review Board to improve current policies to prevent child sex abuse and a “strong and broadly based commitment to address the gaps in current policies of prevention and oversight that allowed these unhealthy patterns of abuse to continue for so long in the US and elsewhere.”
“These should not be overlooked,” she said.
l Meanwhile, a United Nations-mandated report on compliance with international obligations regarding the protection and rights of children will be ready for submission this autumn, a Vatican diplomat said. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative to UN agencies in Geneva, told Catholic News Service that the report was nearing completion and would probably be presented in September or October.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child calls for governments of signatory countries of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to submit a comprehensive review of how convention regulations are being implemented, as well as progress reports every five years. The Vatican is party to the convention and did not send its report when first due in 1997.
The Vatican’s report is awaited with particular interest, especially by some human rights groups, because of report of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy and other church figures.
Amnesty International named the Vatican in its annual report released in May for failing to comply with international obligations regarding the protection of children, including from sexual abuse.