Tuesday, September 14, 2010 New Stats: 10% of Catholic Priests Were Pedophiles and Still Counting, 20 to 200 Times More Than General Population, City of Angels, September 16, 2010

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 New Stats: 10% of Catholic Priests Were Pedophiles and Still Counting, 20 to 200 Times More Than General Population

City of Angels
September 16, 2010

http://cityofangels8.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-stats-10-percent-of-catholic.html

The number of pedophile priests found so far in the U.S. Catholic Church is "extrapolated" to be as high as 10,969 according to Bishop Accountabillity.org, and they are still counting.

The international numbers get higher as courts order release of documents in American and European dioceses. "The percentage of paedophile priests is 20 to 200 times higher than the incidence found in the secular population," according to a report by Vania Lucia Gaito (pictured) that City of Angels has published in today's post. Italian psychologist and journalist Gaito is known for her work with the blog Bispensiero to bypass mainstream media restraints and broadcast the BBC documentary Sex Crimes and the Vatican with subtitles in Italy in 2007. When CofA received her report last summer, we realized it coincides with numbers released at Bishop Accountability July 1, 2010:

After the March 2009 release of audit documents by the New Hampshire AG, the names of 74 accused Manchester priests are known, or over 8.9% of the 831 diocesan priests, which extrapolates to 9,768 nationally. Covington diocese states that 9.6% of its priests have been accused, which extrapolates to 10,531 nationally. Over 10% of Providence RI priests have been accused, which extrapolates to over 10,969 nationally.

BA founder and president Terry McKiernan writes: "When an independent assessment is done with true access, the percentage of accused priests is about 10 percent. That is a shocking number. No other profession has such a high percentage." Read the updated numbers here at Bishop Accountabillity.

"To hand a child over to a clergyman means to expose him/her to a risk which is at least twenty times higher than that of handing him/her over to a teacher, to a neighbour, to a family friend," writes Gaito from Italy. "In regard to what the Church wants you to believe; i.e., that the risk is the same, you only have to analyze the figures to realize that it is not true."

Still parishioners prefer to believe the numbers they hear from the pulpit, as evidenced in a recent Denver Post editorial:

"The problem [of pedophile priests] is vastly different from that described so enthusiastically by the media, and most of the critical measures have already been taken. Based on the results of the John Jay Criminal Research Study conducted in New York in 2004, Jenkins summarizes that the documented evidence for clerical crime is far less extensive than is widely believed. Even in the overheated and litigious atmosphere following the Boston scandals, the Jay study reported no allegations against 24 priests out of every 25.…" Continue reading My brother, the priest in Denver Post.