The cardinal strongly resisted inquiries by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who had been commissioned by the United States bishops' conference to study how dioceses handled sex-abuse complaints.

Cardinal Mahony retired in 2011 and his successor, Archbishop José Gomez, has told him "he will no longer have any administrative or public duties" in the archdiocese.

Continue reading

The conclusions of the study were immediately challenged by victims of abuse, their advocates, and those who maintain an enormous archive of documentation related to the scandal. Among the reasons they say the report should be approached with caution or skepticism:

• Questions persist about the reliability of the basic data that underpins both the most recent study, as well as one on the nature and scope of the scandal that was released in 2004, because the researchers relied principally on reporting by bishops. The reliability of such reporting is called into question on a number of fronts and was most recently challenged by a grand jury report that claimed that officials of the Philadelphia archdiocese had not reported dozens of credibly accused priests. Doubts about the reliability of the numbers were even given credibility by one of the John Jay researchers in a recent interview.
• The conclusion that priests' behavior was influenced by and reflected turmoil in American culture during the 1960s and 1970s is called into question, or at least qualified, say experts, given revelations of similar widespread scandals in the United Kingdom and several European countries. The dimensions of the scandal in those countries surfaced in recent months, at a point when the John Jay researchers were concluding research on the U.S. church.
• The lack of any in-depth look at institutional dynamics, particularly clerical/hierarchical culture, an element some think is integral to understanding why and how abuse of children was covered up and tolerated for so many years.

Continue reading the analysis Fundamental questions not answered by John Jay report

Source

• Image: Catholic-Sun

The report conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, also found

• few priest offenders were pedophiles
• abusers were not acting on their homosexuality
• mandatory celibacy did not turn clerics into molesters
• it is not possible to identify offenders before they acted
• there is no single cause of the abuse
• abusers selected boys rather than girls because they had more access to them

Church leaders hoped to learn how dioceses could identify offenders before they acted. Researchers, however, said they could find no single cause of the abuse, and said molesters generally haven't specialized in victims according to age or gender.

"There's no indication in our data that priests are any more likely to abuse children than anyone else in society," said Karen Terry, principal investigator for the report.

Garbage in, garbage out

The Survivors Network of those Abused by priests labelled the report as "garbage in, garbage out" and dismissed it.

The network questioned the validity of the report because it was paid for by the bishops, Catholic foundations, individual donors and a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Terry insisted the findings were independent.

"We did the writing," Terry said. "This is our report. None of the bishops had any influence on the findings of the study."

The authors said they found no "psychological characteristics" or "developmental histories" that distinguished guilty priests from clergy who did not molest children.

Only a tiny percentage of the accused priests - less than 5 percent - could be technically defined as pedophiles, meaning adults with a primary, intense attraction to children who have not yet gone through puberty. The bulk of victims were ages 11 to 14.

Sources

• Associated Press
• Reuters
• Image: Will you look at that