Mike Stechschulte: Perspective badly needed in abuse crisis

UNITED STATES
Times-Herald

According to one study, approximately 546,000 children in the United States were sexually abused last year. According to another, 16 percent of youths 14-17 years old are sexually abused in any given year in the United States.

A third study says that over the course of their school careers, nearly 10 percent of K-12 students will be the victim of some form of sexual abuse at school, with one in 10 of those involving a teacher or school employee. If you draw the numbers out, that means roughly 4.5 million students currently in grade or high school have been abused by an educator, or 375,000 annually.

Unfortunately, there has never been a widespread, authoritative analysis of the issue of child sexual abuse in the United States to help shine light on the instances of exactly where, when, how often and by whom this scourge on civilized society continues to take place.

But if the scores of smaller studies indicate one thing clearly, it’s that it does continue to take place — in schools, homes, churches, day cares, and anywhere else adults have easy access to children — at an alarming rate.

The Catholic Church was rightly called on the issue of child sexual abuse when the Boston Globe first revealed the scope of the problem in 2002: A frightening 4,400 priests — 4 percent — had been accused of abusing a minor in a 52-year span between 1950 and 2002, with the vast majority of those cases between 1960-80. While the Catholic Church should be held to a higher standard in society, given the trust it once possessed and especially when dioceses were accused of hiding or ignoring abuse, 4 percent is still less than half the rate at which teachers — even today — are accused of abusing their students.

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