Do other clergymen abuse their young parishoners on par with Roman Catholic priests in the US?

Question

Sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church at least $1.5 billion since 1950.
--Yahoo News Article, today.

Are other religious organizations more successful at keeping this out of the papers? This seems like a problem of epidemic proportions, but it is unrealistic (to me) that the behavior of other clerics is not similar. Is there something different about the Roman Catholics that can explain this?

Answer 1

OVERALL DATA
The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems was developed by the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Human Services in partnership with the States to collect annual statistics on child maltreatment from State child protective services agencies. For the year 2001, it was found that approximately 903,000 children were victims of child maltreatment, 10 percent of whom (or 90,000) were sexually abused. It also found that 59 percent of the perpetrators of child abuse or neglect were women and 41 percent were men.[i]
In 2001, clinical child psychologist Wade F. Horn reported on the work of researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. The researchers found that nearly 20 percent of low-income women, recruited through family planning, obstetrical or gynecological clinics, had experienced child sexual abuse.
Horn summarized the researchers’ findings on poor women as follows: “Family friends and acquaintances compose the largest group of perpetrators (28 percent), followed by such relatives as uncles and cousins (18 percent), stepfathers (12 percent), male siblings (10 percent), biological fathers (10 percent), boyfriends of the child’s mother (9 percent), grandfathers and stepgrandfathers (7 percent), and strangers (4 percent).” Horn was struck by the fact that 10 percent were biological fathers and only 4 percent were strangers. “Which means,” he said, “86 percent of the perpetrators were known to the family, but were someone other than the child’s father.”[ii]
According to Dr. Garth A. Rattray, about the same incidence of abuse occurs among all the socio-economic classes. For example, he reports that “about 85 percent of the offenders [of child sexual abuse] are family members, babysitters, neighbors, family friends or relatives. About one in six child molesters are other children.” Unlike the first study cited, Rattray reports that most of the offenders are male.[iii]
It is obvious that children are much more likely to be sexually abused by family members and friends than by anyone else. This suggests that if preventative measures are to work, they must begin in the home, and not someplace else.

Specific data on PRIESTS, PROTESTANT MINISTERS, NON-CHRISTIAN CLERGY, AND TEACHERS:
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.htm

CONCLUSION
The issue of child sexual molestation is deserving of serious scholarship. Too often, assumptions have been made that this problem is worse in the Catholic clergy than in other sectors of society. This report does not support this conclusion. Indeed, it shows that family members are the most likely to sexually molest a child. It also shows that the incidence of the sexual abuse of a minor is slightly higher among the Protestant clergy than among the Catholic clergy, and that it is significantly higher among public school teachers than among ministers and priests.
In a survey for the Wall Street Journal-NBC News, it was found that 64 percent of the public thought that Catholic priests frequently abused children.[xxxix] This is outrageously unfair, but it is not surprising given the media fixation on this issue. While it would be unfair to blame the media for the scandal in the Catholic Church, the constant drumbeat of negative reporting surely accounts for these remarkably skewed results.[xl]
Without comparative data, little can be learned. Numbers are not without meaning, but they don’t count for much unless a baseline has been established. Moreover, sexual misconduct is difficult to measure given its mostly private nature. While crime statistics are helpful, we know from social science research that most crimes go unreported. This is especially true of sexual abuse crimes. At the end of the day, estimates culled from survey research are the best we can do.
By putting the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in perspective, it is hoped that this report will make for a more fair and educated public response.

Answer 2

i choose to respond to this question, because of the fact it has provoked various very solid solutions. i could upload that I even have priceless little self assurance left in the machinations of Civil regulation, which seems to be long divorced from justice, and particularly chuffed to start a witch-hunt on harmless human beings for their "crime" of being in a similar team as a wide-unfold criminal. Habeas Corpus and the splendid to be harmless until eventually shown to blame has already been breached in England, as absolutely everyone who has had to undergo an more advantageous CRB verify will understand. i could additionally say that i will analyze a civil divorce carried out by the County courtroom and an annulment carried out by a Catholic Tribunal, for the reason that I even have gone by the two. The civil courtroom circumstances value hundreds of pounds, and added approximately an unresolved subject the place there is ongoing and everlasting enmity. I even have not seen my very own son and daughter now for 9 years. And we've been given a ritual the place a choose proclaims the termination of 50 marriages without one declaring their names or claiming duty for the wreckage left in the back of. The annulment value hundreds. It explored in excellent element each and every appropriate area of the marriage, the place it particularly is succeeded and the place it failed. It endeavoured if in any respect achieveable to maintain the marriage. In failing to accomplish that, it gracefully ordinary the disability of me and/or my spouse to undertake marriage on the time, and laid a situation that next time, proper training in the mild of the previous failure be undertaken until eventually now any destiny marriage be sanctified. If the Church courts have been doing their job, there would be no desire or reason to contain the police. At Confession, area of the penance could be eliminating to a closed order until eventually those demons and sins were exact purged, no longer merely passing the parcel. It exchange right into a dereliction of accountability in eire (and the u . s . a .) and now the entire Church is having to go through for it. As for the vow of priesthood celibacy, previous answerers have positioned it extra effective than i could. i do no longer think of it particularly is going to be obligatory, even though it particularly is going to be noticeably recommended. If absolutely everyone's sexual urges are so solid that to withstand them is torture, then it particularly is extra effective to be married and in a relaxing sexual courting with a consenting person than it particularly is to be tortured.

Answer 3

Roman Catholics do not allow their clergy to marry. Some gay men may feel that they can use the clergy as an escape from the expectation to marry a woman. Instead they get trapped in a cycle of homosexuality with young boys.

Other religions have clergy that can maintain sexual relationships with a spouse.

Answer 4

well rabbi abuse is also coming out.

but the main dif. is catholic priests cant marry, does that have any affect? i dont know, since there are plenty married child molesters(my grandmas neighbor is married and was arrested trying to arrange a meeting with a 13 year old girl in an empty parking lot)

Answer 5

In the authoritative work by Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests, it was determined that between .2 and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles. The figure among the Protestant clergy ranges between 2 and 3 percent.
[Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 50 and 81.]

According to one study, .2 percent of athletic coaches nationwide have a criminal record of some sort of sexual offense.
(Michael Dobie, “Violation of Trust; When Young Athletes Are Sex-Abuse Victims, Their Coaches Are Often the Culprits,” Newsday, June 9, 2002, p. C25.)

The American Medical Association found in 1986 that one in four girls, and one in eight boys, are sexually abused in or out of school before the age of 18. Two years later, a study included in The Handbook on Sexual Abuse of Children, reported that one in four girls, and one in six boys, is sexually abused by age 18 [a]. It was reported in 1991 that 17.7 percent of males who graduated from high school, and 82.2 percent of females, reported sexual harassment by faculty or staff during their years in school. Fully 13.5 percent said they had sexual intercourse with their teacher [b].
[a] Michael Dobie, “Violation of Trust,” Newsday, June 9, 2002, p. C25.
[b] Daniel Wishnietsky, “Reported and Unreported Teacher-Student Sexual Harassment,” Journal of Ed Research, Vol. 3, 1991, pp. 164-69.


So overall, it looks like there are more sexually abusive priests than coaches, but fewer sexually abusive priests than ministers or school teachers.

Answer 6

yes they do but because the Catholic Church is the longest and world known people from the media tends to attack the church the most

Answer 7

It's across the board and the other denominations CAN marry so the unmarried priest thing doesn't wash.

Answer 8

Don't forget teachers , boy scout leaders , U.S. senators , relatives and choir directors , to name a few.