Public School Sexual Abuse is far worse than in Catholic Schools

[Belisarius565]

That's just your liberal, revisionist interpretation of it. Like the people who say that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was rape and lack of hospitality... liberals!

Any proper theologian will tell you that the sin of Onan was not to disobey a direct order from God, but to use neglect the reason God created sex for, which is reproduction, only. Same as they will tell you that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is homosexuality. Rape and harassment are alright, as long as you keep it heterosexual.

You are jumping all over the place, going from what God commanded Onan to do, which was to have a child with his dead brothers wife, which he decided he was not going to do. Then you talk about sodom and gomorrah??

Again the most important part of Onan, was that he disobeyed God and in his evil doing so, was killed. It is as if God called me to build a boat with these trees, and I build a house instead. Where in the bible it calls Rape and harassment alright as long as it is heterosexual?

Read your bible and it will show about sodom and gomorrah, Genesis 18: 20 And the Lord said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. 21 I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” This is way more then just homosexuality if everyone in the city was increasingly wicked.

And in Genesis 19 what lot did with offering his daughters to that crowd of men, young and old, was WRONG, no where does it say it was "right in God's eyes."

What are you trying to do here with that post calling me a "liberal" anyway?

Also regarding sex, it was created for more then just reproduction purposes, between a man and a woman, in marriage to be bound together, as "one flesh" to share life in the most intimate way. Children are blessings from that union, which is physically represented in the matching of each partners biological information. If you want I will give you biblical passages showing that sex is not just for making babies.

[Cybran]

Obviously less children are molested by priests then by regular people. The problem is that left wing politicians and media find it far too useful to accuse everyone related to the church of being a child molester. It helps their political goals to point at the other side, instead of both sides.

[Deleted]

The Hoax is that people say every other priest is a child molester, and I still heard bad rap against Catholics in general when I was in the US, either being in the media, or people who didn't knew better.

Well, when a job requirement is a mental disorder that tends to happen.

[Deleted]

snip

I was being sarcastic. In fact i agree with your interpretation. The problem is that mainstream Catholicism and Evangelicalism disagree with us.

[Belisarius565]

I was being sarcastic. In fact i agree with your interpretation. The problem is that mainstream Catholicism and Evangelicalism disagree with us.

Sorry, could not tell, yeah it is a pretty big problem as you say.

[ddsad2212]

You used two different statistics there and tried to compare them no? You said 4% of priest were accused , and then stated 6% of public students would be sexual assaulted. How can the two statistics be compared? Sure if every priest in the 4% assaulted enough students they could easily surpass the 6% and must people like that will not just do it to one person. Meh I am been reading things wrong and talking shit the last two days so many I picked this up wrong, but honestly the two statistics do not look at all comparable

[Spectral]

You used two different statistics there and tried to compare them no? You said 4% of priest were accused , and then stated 6% of public students would be sexual assaulted.

Right, this is what I caught as well. It actually makes priests look awful if these numbers are valid.

I'll also note that priests set themselves up as paragons of virtue and should generally be held to a higher standard.

[Deleted]

No statistic can include the number of child molesters the Catholic church has covered up, my guess would be, a lot more than have been caught.

[Deleted]

Since the question of how many victims each sex offender has, I did some quick googling. Here's a bunch of different figures and their respective sources.

Male offenders who abused girls had an average of 52 victims each. Men who molested boys had an astonishing average of 150 victims each. Only 3% of these crimes had ever been detected.

The average pedophile molests 260 victims during their lifetime.

An average serial child molester may have as many as 400 victims in his lifetime.

A 1994 National Institute of Health survey of 453 pedophiles, conducted by Dr. Gene Abel, showed these criminals were collectively responsible for the molestation of over 67,000 children. That’s an average of 148 children per individual pedophile.

Edit: Did some more googling and found a page claiming a way smaller number. The argument basically runs: The small number of sex offenders who get caught do so because of their large number of victims. Most sex offenders get away with it because of their small number of victims.

Abel et al.’s (1987) median figures of 1.3 female and 4.4 male non-incest victims therefore provide a more accurate insight into the true number of victims of child sex offenders who target children outside of their family.

The following page, quoting the same study (and linking to the paywalled study) puts it:

In the Abel study, the offenders with male nonincest victims committed an average of 281.7 offenses. The median number of offenses was 10.1. This means that half of the offenders committed less than 10.1 offenses. The median number of offenses for those with female nonincest victims was 1.4. This means that a small percentage of offenders in the study are responsible for a disproportionately large amount of the offenses.

[Cerebrate]

You just compared the number of priests accused vs the number of public students that did accusing. You're not comparing the same things.
It should be priests accused vs teachers accused or student accusations vs student accusations.

The reasons why it is a big deal are cover ups and priests are supposedly men of god. Higher expectations are placed on them.

I'm not saying this much is true, but your post sounds like: "I'm catholic and it upsets me that catholics are getting bad publicity. Focus on public schools instead."

I certainly do agree that the media twists things. I don't know a single news organization that doesn't. The whole focus should be on child molestation as a whole and how to stop these disgusting people. It shouldn't be "Don't trust priests, they're child molesters." or "Well at least we're not as bad as them."

[Unholyground]

No statistic can include the number of child molesters the Catholic church has covered up, my guess would be, a lot more than have been caught.

True that, but most people are right there are cases in all walks of life and professions its just that the religious always seem to get away with more.

[Magpai]

The only people who find this shocking are those with prejudice against Catholic institutions or just church institutions in general, or those who are so weak-minded that they let the media dictate their perception of the world. ANd those people will probably just deny it to avoid the cognitive dissonance anyway, as several people in this thread already have.

[Spectral]

The only people who find this shocking are those with prejudice against Catholic institutions or just church institutions in general, or those who are so weak-minded that they let the media dictate their perception of the world. ANd those people will probably just deny it to avoid the cognitive dissonance anyway, as several people in this thread already have.

This is some really spectacular projection. People have explained why, using some very straightforward logic and statistics, it's a bad comparison that actually demonstrates a severe problem in Catholic institutions. Rather than engage that, you simply choose to believe the OP's poor reasoning, as it jibes with what you've already decided is true.

[Purlina]

We may aslo want to the amount of abuse that is forced.

Both are extreamly bad, but I consider forced abuse worse when compared to willing participants.

[Magpai]

This is some really spectacular projection. People have explained why, using some very straightforward logic and statistics, it's a bad comparison that actually demonstrates a severe problem in Catholic institutions. Rather than engage that, you simply choose to believe the OP's poor reasoning, as it jibes with what you've already decided is true.

Not really, but "I know you are but what am I" isn't really my thing, so...

---------- Post added 2013-02-04 at 04:02 PM ----------

We may aslo want to the amount of abuse that is forced.

Both are extreamly bad, but I consider forced abuse worse when compared to willing participants.

From a legal perspective, underage children are legally incapable of consenting to sex. I'm still morbidly curious as to what you think constitutes a "willing participant" who is a victim of sexual abuse.

[Purlina]

From a legal perspective, underage children are legally incapable of consenting to sex. I'm still morbidly curious as to what you think constitutes a "willing participant" who is a victim of sexual abuse.

For example underage student has sex with teacher. Teacher gets prosecuted, but after a while the couple gets married and stay together...

In the US there was also a case of two underage kids having sex with each other. Both kids where prosecuted!


I am not using the term "willing" from a legal perspective, I think you understand what context I am using it in...

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

From a legal perspective, underage children are legally incapable of consenting to sex. I'm still morbidly curious as to what you think constitutes a "willing participant" who is a victim of sexual abuse.

I'm curious as to whether you believe that an adult having sex with a kid who is wants to participate in the act is an equal crime to an adult forcibly raping a kid?

[Spectral]

I'm curious as to whether you believe that an adult having sex with a kid who is wants to participate in the act is an equal crime to an adult forcibly raping a kid?

It's also worth defining "kid" more tightly here, right? Obviously an adult sleeping with someone underage isn't good, but on the spectrum of bad things, sleeping with a 16 year old that can't give legal consent but seems like a willing participant isn't equal to raping a 9 year old.

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

It's also worth defining "kid" more tightly here, right? Obviously an adult sleeping with someone underage isn't good, but on the spectrum of bad things, sleeping with a 16 year old that can't give legal consent but seems like a willing participant isn't equal to raping a 9 year old.

I would also agree with that. Unfortunately I think people look at the law, which is intentionally vague, as a place to draw morals from, and thus think of anything falling into a specific category as equally egregious.

[Spectral]

I would also agree with that. Unfortunately I think people look at the law, which is intentionally vague, as a place to draw morals from, and thus think of anything falling into a specific category as equally egregious.

The other thing that happens, in my experience, is someone in such a conversation immediately feels the need to show off their legal expertise and inform the room that a 16 year old is not capable of consent. To this, I eye-roll thoroughly. The problem with a student-teacher situation in the case of a 16 or 17 year old student has much more to do with the inherently coercive power disparity there, not the inability of a 16 or 17 year old person to comprehend the concept of sexual consent.

So, yes, a teacher sleeping with a student still deserves the Bad Thing label, but we need to have enough granularity to treat it very differently than physically forced rape or rape of a very young child.