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  Clergy Sexual Misconduct Study

Unreasonable Faith
September 16, 2009

http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/09/16/clergy-sexual-misconduct-study/

Via the Washington Post, a survey from Baylor University finds that, "One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader."

Researchers at Baylor University have conducted a random, national survey with over 3,500 respondents to examine the prevalence and caused of Clergy Sexual Misconduct (CSM), which they define as: "Minister, priests, rabbis, or other clergypersons or religious leaders who make sexual advances or propositions to persons in the congregations they serve who are not their spouses or significant others."

From the Clergy Sexual Misconduct Survey Executive Summary:

  • More than 3% of women who had attended a congregation in the past month reported that they had been the object of CSM at some time in their adult lives

  • 92% of these sexual advances had been made in secret, not in open dating relationships; and

  • 67% of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.

    In the average American congregation of 400 persons, with women representing, on average, 60% of the congregation, there are, on average of 7 women who have experienced clergy sexual misconduct.

  • Of the entire sample, 8% report having known about CSM occurring in a congregation they have attended. Therefore, in the average American congregation of 400 congregants, there are, on average, 32 persons who have experienced CSM in their community of faith.

Check out the study itself. It has a number of case studies, leading to an interesting discussion of the problems that allowed the incidents to happen. There's also a CSM news aggregator that could keep an atheist blog in business for years.

I'd be really curious to see what these numbers look like compared to sexual misconduct found from secular authority figures. Would the numbers be comparable, or does the influence of religion play a role? I'd also like to know how many of these clergy were repeat offenders. Is this a case of widespread abuse from many different clergy? Or is this a case like the Catholic sex abuse scandal, where a few priests were able to molest incredible numbers of children because the cases were always covered up?

  
 
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