Denver Catholic

8 FEBRUARY 23-MARCH 8, 2019 | DENVER CATHOLIC In-Depth BY JULIE ASHER | CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE C hild sexual abuse in the United States is at epidemic levels. More than 60,000 children are reported to have been abused every year, outnumbering those killed by guns or cars. Those who survive are often left not only with physical wounds, but also with psychological wounds that may never heal. These wounds exact both a profound personal and social cost. Much attention has been focused on the issue of child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church, and rightly so. Allegations of abuse by clergy and church workers as well as cover-ups and bureaucratic mishandling by bish- ops, dioceses and religious orders have caused terrible pain for survivors of such abuse and their families. It also has resulted in disillusionment on the part of ordinary Catholics. The cost of this abuse and its aftermath totals more than $4 billion so far, according to the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection. While the Catholic Church con- tinues to struggle with this legacy, it has instituted a wide variety of steps to improve oversight, identify abusers and protect children. One under-reported fact from the recent, highly publicized Pennsylvania grand jury report is that for all of the many horrors it identified, the good news was that it appeared to document the decline in current cases. As Jesuit Father Tom Reese told America magazine in its Dec. 24 issue, every one of the accused priests in the report was either deceased or had been removed from ministry, "and only two had been accused of abusing a child in the last 20 years." During these same 20 years, how- ever, an estimated 1.2 million children in this country were abused nationwide in schools, organizations, churches and families. Understanding the plague of sexual abuse in this country means going beyond the immediate headlines and understanding what experts are saying about this scourge. It also means look- ing not only at the Catholic Church but at all institutions and societal structures where abuse can take place. So far, no grand jury, congressional committee or law enforcement organi- zation has undertaken a broad societal investigation of what is happening to children in public schools as well as private, in sports and other youth-ori- ented programs and organizations, in pediatric facilities and perhaps, most common, in families. (In Australia, a Royal Commission investigation of child abuse in nongovernmental orga- nizations took five years.) "Sexual victimization of children is a serious and pervasive issue in society. It is present in families, and it is not uncommon in institutions where adults form mentoring and nurturing relation- ships with adolescents, including schools and religious, sports and social organiza- tions," said the John Jay report issued in May 2011 on "The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010." "If you want to talk about sexual abuse of minors, you're talking about families, foster care programs, public schools," New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said in a recent Sirius XM interview. "You're talking about orga- nizations, every religion, you're talking about public schools, it is a societal, cul- tural problem. There is no occupation that is freed from it." The U.S. Catholic Church "is no greater [an] o•ender than anybody else. In fact, some of the statistics would say that priestly abuse among minors is less than other professions," the cardinal said. He made the remarks in late January after the New York Legislature passed a measure to ease the statute of limita- tions on civil abuse cases. The state's Catholic bishops agreed to support the bill after it was broadened to include not just the Catholic Church but public institutions. Over the years, highly touted orga- nizations such as the Boy Scouts, U.S.A. Gymnastics and Penn State have had abuse scandals. Often such organizations are accused of behavior similar to what the Catholic Church has been accused of: denials, cover-ups, relocation of predators and unwillingness to tell authorities. In July 2018, shortly before the Pennsylvania grand jury report was released, a team of Chicago Tribune reporters turned out a special series on abuse in Chicago's public-school system: "Betrayed: Chicago schools fail to protect students from sexual abuse and assault, leaving lasting damage." "Whether the sexual attacks were brutal rapes, frightening verbal come- ons or 'creepy,' groping touches, the students often felt betrayed by school o†cials and wounded for years," the paper reported. "When students summoned the courage to disclose abuse, teachers and principals failed to alert child wel- fare investigators or police despite the state's mandated reporter law," it said. The Tribune is hardly the first media outlet to examine abuse in the nation's public schools. In December 2016, USA Today published its own series. "Despite decades of repeated sex abuse scandals — from the Roman Cath- olic Church to the Boy Scouts to scores of news media reports identifying prob- lem teachers — America's public schools continue to conceal the actions of dan- gerous educators in ways that allow them to stay in the classroom," it said. USA Today's network of media out- lets conducted a yearlong investigation and "found that education o†cials put children in harm's way by covering up evidence of abuse, keeping allegations secret and making it easy for abusive teachers to find jobs elsewhere." "As a result, schoolchildren across the nation continue to be beaten, raped and harassed by their teachers while government o†cials at every level stand by and do nothing," the paper reported. How bad may it be in our schools? According to an Associated Press 2017 investigative report, abuse cases are underreported, but what is tallied is staggering. The yearlong investigation "uncov- ered roughly 17,000 o†cial reports of sex assaults by students over a four-year period, from fall 2011 to spring 2015." "Though that figure represents the most complete tally yet of sexual assaults among the nation's 50 million K-12 stu- dents," AP said, "it does not fully cap- ture the problem because such attacks are greatly underreported, some states don't track them and those that do vary widely in how they classify and catalog sexual violence. A number of academic estimates range sharply higher." What happens when abuse is reported varies widely from school district to school district, but what The Associated Press found was not encouraging. "Elementary and secondary schools have no national requirement to track or disclose sexual violence, and they feel tremendous pressure to hide it," AP reported. "Even under varying state laws, acknowledging an incident can trigger liabilities and requirements to act. And when schools don't act — or when their e•orts to root out abuse are ine•ectual — justice is not served." 2018 began with the sentencing of Larry Nassar, the former U.S.A. Gym- nastics and Michigan State University sports doctor who was world famous because he treated the top U.S. Olympic women gymnasts. He was convicted and Child sex abuse is 'a serious and pervasive' issue in U.S. PHOTO BY RENE BERNAL | UNSPLASH

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