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	Girls As Victims -- an Emerging Story of Clergy Sex Abuse By Jan Erickson National Organization of Women August 5, 2010 http://www.now.org/issues/violence/clergyabuse_girls.html In addition to sexual exploitation by clergy of boys and adult women there is the largely untold story of sexual abuse of younger girls and adolescent females. Researchers who have looked at the data believe that even more girls than boys have been victims. An article posted in early April at newsweek.com, "What about the girls? Boys aren't the only victims of the Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal" wondered if young women have been left out of the story. A 2002 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops-sponsored survey by John Jay College of Criminal Justice documented that girls are, in fact, frequent victims. According to an early analysis, boys were the victims of sexual misconduct much more often than girls, by a factor of four to one, but girls tended to be younger victims -- many under 8 years old. About one-quarter of the female victims were aged 15 to 17. But some believe that these statistics are skewed. Margaret Leland Smith of John Jay, who reviewed that survey data and later reports of abuse, says that the national rate is closer to one in three girls and one in five boys and that "the behavior is profoundly widespread." Rape, Abortions and Cleaning up the Mess - A California-based expert on Catholic clergy abuse and former priest-turned-lawyer Patrick Wall, who now works with victims, says that females are more likely to be attractive to clergy because the majority of priests are heterosexual -- but some are psychologically and sexually immature. Wall has a special insight into the problem. According to an article in late April in the Toronto Star, Wall "was a Benedictine monk for 12 years, working as a 'fixer' dispatched to tidy up messy sexual problems of priests and laymen at troubled parishes and schools. He said when a girl required surgery after rape the code was that she needed a 'hernia' operation." Wall also counseled accused priests, heard confessions from traumatized victims and worked on cases where priests impregnated girls then procured abortions for them, the Star reports. He believes that teen-aged girls are the silent majority of priest-related sexual abuse. Wall's experiences led him to conclude that most, if not all, of the195 archdioceses and hundreds of religious orders in the U.S. employ "fixers" like him to "wipe down crime scenes" involving abused children. The former priest indicated that the church is especially vicious with women claiming sex abuse, frequently using the "whore defense" to intimidate them from pursuing criminal and civil complaints. Wall, who quit the church in disgust, does not believe the Vatican's pledge to better protect boys and girls from predators. Certain reforms were established in the United States following a wave of sex-abuse reports of young boys in 2002, and since then the number of reported cases has declined. But many shocking cases have come to light in Germany, Ireland, Brazil and elsewhere in recent months, with some evidence that Pope Benedict XVI knew about some of these cases and did not immediately take corrective action. Sex Offenders Have Psychiatric Problems - A Santa Clara University psychology professor, Thomas Plante, who has evaluated and treated about 60 clergy sex offenders said that most exhibited a variety of psychiatric problems, like personality and impulse control disorders. Robert Talach, a London-based lawyer who has represented more than 100 victims of clergy abuse, says that he expects the male-female ratio to change within five to 10 years because girls were first permitted to become altar servers in the 1970s and that disclosure of abuse typically is delayed for 30 years. Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson, who specializes in clergy abuse cases, told the Christian Science Monitor that when the child sex-abuse scandals were first reported, "For girls and women, the challenge of coming forward is heightened by the inclination of the church and society to blame females for abuse. When they come forward the response has been, 'Well, what did you do to seduce them?' Somehow there is greater cultural acceptance of that notion, and that cultural bias gets magnified by the sexism and paternalism of the clerical culture." Sexism Plays a Role - Barbara Dorris, a survivor of priest abuse and a national outreach director for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told Newsweek, "In part because of sexism and homophobia, journalists, police, prosecutors, attorneys, and sometimes even parents feel even more outraged when a boy is sexually abused by a powerful man than when a girl is assaulted, and are thus more apt to take action, pursue charges, file lawsuits, and talk publicly." Lisa Miller, writing for Newsweek.com in early April, quotes a "fuming" Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton: "I see [the hierarchy] as outrageously indifferent to the welfare of children. For you and me this is hard to understand. It seems to us out of step with the world. But they don't want to be in step with the world." Miller makes a number of insightful observations about the larger clergy sexual abuse scandals. She pens, "The problem -- bluntly put -- is that the bishops and cardinals who manage the institutional church live behind guarded walls in a pre-Enlightenment world. Within their enclave, they remain largely untouched by the democratic revolutions in France and America. On questions of morality, they hold the group -- in this case, the church -- above the individual and regard modernity as a threat." Empowered Women a Solution - Miller continues, "By keeping modernity at bay, though, the men who run the Catholic Church have willfully ignored one of the great achievements of the modern age: the integration of women in the workforce and public life." She argues that insular groups of men often do bad things and suggests that a major part of the solution is to open the Catholic Church to women as priests and in other positions of power in the church. In the same article, Frank Butler, president of FADIC, a group of Catholic family foundations, says, "It's a pretty good guess that we would not be in this same predicament were women involved." Thousands of Nuns Sexually Victimized - A 1996 national survey conducted by researchers at St. Louis University and paid for, in part, by several orders of Catholic nuns, made another appalling finding. According to a 2003 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the researchers estimated that a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the U.S. had suffered some form of sexual trauma. Some of that sexual abuse, exploitation or harassment had come at the hands of priests and other nuns in the church. The survey documented that the victimization often has had devastating psychological effects on the women, leaving many nuns with feelings of anger, shame, anxiety and depression, with some considering suicide. Survey responses were returned by 1,164 nuns representing 123 religious orders throughout the U.S. and involved questions about child sexual abuse as well as sexual harassment and adult sexual exploitation. One in five nuns had been sexually abused as a child, mostly by male family members, but about 9 percent related to priests, nuns or other religious people. One in eight nuns said that she had been sexually exploited -- most by a priest, nun or other religious person. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one of the researchers, Ann Wolf, said that she believes it is vital that the Catholic Church recognize the problem. Wolf, who has researched sexual victimization of women in other denominations, noted: "The bishops appear to be only looking at the issue of child sexual abuse, but the problem is bigger than that. Catholic sisters are being violated, in their ministries, at work, in pastoral counseling." For more information: "What About the Girls? Boys aren't the only victims of the Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal," by Pat Wingert and Barbara Kantrowitz, Newsweek Web Exclusive, April 15, 2010 "Church Scandal's Next Wave: Abused Girls" by Mary Ormsby, The Star (Canada) April 25, 2010 "Wider Circle of Clergy Abuse: As US Bishops Meet, Attention is Drawn to Female Victims of Priests," Christian Science Monitor, June 4, 2002 "A Woman's Place Is In the Church," Lisa Miller, Newsweek, April 12, 2010 Female Victims of Clergy Abuse; Recent stories of interest. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) Nuns as sexual victims get little notice, by Bill Smith, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 4, 2003, The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
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