Monday, July 2, 2012

How big is the Catholic priest child molester problem? Try this on for size.



Monsignor William Lynn of the Philadelphia Archdiocese was convicted recently of child endangerment for covering up and/or reassigning thirty-seven (37) known or suspected child molester priests.

It is the first trial and conviction of a US Catholic Church official for their role in a cover up of this cult’s monumental disgrace. It will not be the last. He is facing 3 ½ to 7 years in prison for his role. He will be sentenced in August.  Here’s the whole story:
  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/06/jury-reaches-verdict-in-sex-abuse-trial-of-catholic-aide/1#.T-4rWRf2Zn4

Msr. Bill’s attention to detailed record keeping provides us, for the first time, with an insight to the scope and breadth of the perversion that infests the Catholic Church; the perversion that Catholic apologists keep insisting is a minuscule percentage of their brethren. 

Think about this:  There are eight-hundred priests in the Philadelphia archdiocese.  Msr. Bill’s list of thirty-seven represents 4.6% of the total.  But the likelihood that he was aware of every priest child molester in his realm is slim to none, after all, they don’t confess it to him, nor do they carry a sign.  It would be relatively safe to postulate that he knew of only 1/3rd to 1/5th  of the total number of molesters.  If it was the conservative 33% then the true total would equate to one-hundred eleven (111) child molester priests - 13.9% of the Philly priest population. 

There are approximately 41,000 Catholic priests in the US.  Assuming there isn’t anything special about the Philadelphia holy water supply or priest enlistment criteria, we can assume that 13.9% of all US priests are similarly inclined toward pedophilia.  That equates to 5,700 perv priests running rampant nation wide.

Gene G. Abel is an expert in child molestation.  In his 2001 The Stop Child Molestation Book  he states that pedophiles who molest male children average 10.2 victims each (twice the rate of those who molest girls).  Thus, the number of American children that were likely molested by today’s priests is 58,000!!  And of course the real number is much higher, since this doesn’t account for priests who retired or died decades ago. If they were included the number of victims would increase exponentially.

The estimated number of pedophiles in the US is 5% of the population.
Source:    Seto MC.(2009) Pedophilia. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 5:391-407.
If we ignore the small percent of child molesting women, and remove the  female population from the calculation, male pedophiles would be roughly 10% of the population. If my conservative Philly estimate is anywhere close to on target this implies that Catholic priests are 39% more likely to be child molesters than the US male population as a whole.

And this is just the tip of the outrage.  There are 409,000 Catholic priests world wide. This could mean as many as 57,000 child molesting priests / over 570,000 child victims internationally just from the existing batch of Catholic clergy. 

Of course this isn’t a scientific analysis.  It is a postulation based on Msr. William Lynn’s records upon which he was convicted; a reasonable assumption of yet to be identified Philadelphia priestly perpetrators; and known statistics of child molester behavior and activity. But one thing is certain - the implications are staggering in terms of victims’ childhoods and adult lives being ruined by these “Men of God” who rape in the name of their God, and with a blind eye, or even a wink and a nod, from the Church hierarchy.

If only a small portion of my extrapolation is accurate, it would still be an epidemic of abuse of monumental proportion by a clique of damnable cloaked and gold encrusted shaman who use their position of trust, their elevated status as the agent of their man-god,  to prey upon innocent children who have already been abused by involuntary indoctrination into religion, fear of God’s retribution, and superstition.
And yet Catholic apologists continue to deny.  

One in particular Divine Word Radio http://www.divinewordradio.com/     http://www.facebook.com/DivineWordRadio   continues to insist it’s a very sad but virtually miniscule issue. I've seen it all:  it’s sometimes the victims own fault having seduced the good priest; or the accusers are out for money and that the Vatican is itself being raped by their invented allegations; or the curse of growing homosexuality in the secular world is at fault. [they equate homosexuality to child molestation, never mind the facts].  Besides, they tell us, the Vatican took steps years ago to clean house and set everything right. It’s a non-issue, blown way out of proportion.  The man called Divine World Radio makes a living defending the indefensible and pretending it's all OK, posting his excuses and deceptions incessantly on USA Today.com's religion section on behalf of the Church.. This buffoon and liar is as much a part of the Catholic Church's despicable behavior/problem as are the perv priests themselves, Msr. Bill Lynn's ilk, and the old fool who pulls the strings in the Vatican. 

If ever there was justification for the Xtian tradition of burning at the stake the prime candidates would be the enablers, perpetrators and apologists for this hypocritical cult of sexual repression and child abuse.  I'd gladly pay for the gasoline and strike the first match.

Better yet, sue  them into oblivion; hit them in their most sensitive part ... their treasury.  That  may be the key to the  beginning of the end for this accursed fraternity of deceivers and perverts.
  

10 comments:

locksmyth said...

"It would be relatively safe to postulate that he knew of only 1/3rd to 1/5th of the total number of molesters."

I wish there was a way to verify the likely portion of modesters he was unaware of. I certainly agree that it exceedingly unlikely he knew about all of them, but I get uncomfortable using magic numbers, even conservative ones.

However the fact that he protected the pedophiles is damning enough to the organization known as the Catholic church.

Jim Hudlow said...

I agree with locksmyth in terms of unverifiable numbers...but when the powers that be call the molestion problem "miniscule" one has to use all the infor available to demonstrate not only that it is not miniscule but is more than likely a mopre massive problem than any catholic, or even the secular athorities responsible for prosecuting these offenses will admit....really disgusting.

helga said...

Even if ONE priest were to be a child molester, it would be one too many for the child/children involved. But as you calculate Hump, many, many more children have been be sacrificed to those men (and please don't forget abusive nuns) Each child's misery presents another solid reason for sane people to turn away from this hideous for-profit corporation called the catholic church.

Anonymous said...

Jerry Sandusky faces hundreds of years in jail. Hows come this guy faces only 3 to 7? What is the average sentence of a priest child molester as compared to that of a football coach?

Pete

Dromedary Hump said...

Thanks for your input all.

As I said, this is a supposition based on both factual details and some assumptions based in reason. I doubt we'll ever know the true number of clergy abusers and abused.

But we have more data here, more to base a supposition upon to assess the much larger scope of the Philly, national and world wide priestly abuse than we do evidence of life on other planets; and yet we largely accept the supposition that life likely does exist outside our solar system simply because we have life on ours.
Just a thought.

Pete: Lynn didn't actually do the molesting, he was found guilty of child endangerment, hence the lesser sentence. Although I agree, the sentence is insufficient to be representative of the harm he allowed to be perpetrated.

Anonymous said...

I know Lynn didn't do the actual molesting... but if I see a man going into a school with a gun, intent on killing a child, and I have the capability to stop him and do nothing then by my way of thinking I am guilty of murder as much as the madman. It will be interesting to see what sentence may be handed out to other Penn State officials, those that did nothing.

Oh well, it's not a perfect world

Pete

Dromedary Hump said...

Pete,
I don't disagree.
Such is the law. It should be changed in every state. Perhaps this case will help prompt change.

Anonymous said...

The diocese involved will play a shell game by moving the money to another. Then they declare bankruptcy. Watched a show about it recently. Civil suit becomes useless then as well. Those poor victims!!!

Anonymous said...

Pastor Lee McFarland of Radiant Church (Assemblies of GOD) Surprise, Arizona is a sexual predator. He is quite skillful at fooling others. He pretends to be Godly in order to scam others.
He has been caught, but has moved onto other churches and fresh meat. Please be warned of this pure evil that exists amongst us!

Unknown said...

They say Catholic priests molest only 6% of their children per year but calculating on 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide, that is 720,000 annually. But in 18 years of schooling before children potentially leave home and if they priests molest new children and not the same ones, you get 12,960,000. Actually the percentage in the world is expected to be much more as many people are too ashamed to come forward. Like rape cases, many would just rather not tell anyone so it could easily be twice as much, even more than they are admitting.