UNITED STATES
Sun Journal
Marty McIntyre
Columns & Analysis | Sunday, April 27, 2014
I don’t get it.
In 2002, the issue of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church by Catholic priests came to light in America. Much of the abuse had been of children between the ages of 11-14, and had occurred decades earlier.
Worse, the Church knew about many of these allegations and had simply moved the offender to a different parish in a different part of the country. These revelations sparked enormous outrage worldwide, and resulted in well over 3,000 civil lawsuits against the offenders and the Catholic Church.
Beginning in 1991 with the Tailhook Scandal, we learned that sexual assault is a common occurrence in the nation’s military. We learned that an estimated 19,000 sexual assaults occur in the military each year, and that 15 percent of female veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from “military sexual trauma” (the Department of Defense term for the impact of sexual assault that occurred within military service).
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