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0 pointsrayiner2y ago0 comments

Of course—congregations are much bigger than classrooms. But the figures above are cited in terms of complaints (corresponding to number of victims) not number of perpetrators. Thus the better comparison is how many people attend school versus the number who attend Catholic Church. Catholics are 1/4 of the population, and over the relevant timeframe (back to 1950), probably half or more attended church regularly.

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morkalork2y ago

Wait no, this doesn't make sense. You should be comparing the rates of bad actors against the number of potential actors (ie rates amongst church staffs vs rates amongst school staffs). Comparing the volume of potential victims is meaningless. To draw an extreme example, what would you say about a religious sect where 100% of its leaders were rapists but there was only 10 people in each congregation? That's okay because public schools have tons more students?

rayinerOP2y ago

Parents care about the probability of their kid being victimized. They don’t care whether 1 priest abuses 10 kids in a congregation of 300 or 10 teachers abuse 10 kids in a school of 300. The relevant metric is number complaints normalized by the relevant potential victim population. There’s more complaints in one year against schools than in 50 years against the Catholic Church. Yes, that’s partly because way more people attend school (everyone) than attend Catholic church regularly. But the difference isn’t a factor of 50. In the relevant period—complaints peaked in the 1980s—probably 1 in 8 Americans attended Catholic Church weekly. (Probably even more than that because families with children are much more likely to attend church.)

morkalork2y ago

Okay, so say you have a kid and you're putting them into bible study and you have a choice between two sessions, one with 20 kids and an instructor that has a 5% chance of being abusive, and another with 10 kids and an instructor with 9.5% chance of being abusive. You would suggest the latter is better because the odds are better for your kid?

The expectation is higher in the first case, but then chances that it's your particular kid would be 1/group size. So I guess it would be more accurate to have 5 kids in the first group to make it 1% vs .95%. That's still not any better is it?

esyir2y ago

At the end of the day, it boils down to this.

Do you rather have your kid to have big N% chance of being abused, or small n%. At a micro level, you might get more control, but at the macro level, the results in aggregate are what matter.

mlyle2y ago

> The relevant metric is number complaints normalized by the relevant potential victim population.

It's obvious there's problems with either rate you'd choose for either task.

We have varying degrees of exposure / vulnerability within the populations. Neither one really directly leads to a "risk per unit of exposure of child" or "risk of a given person being an offender".

But it seems like you have some pretty motivated reasoning going on: it sure looks like religious organizations have not done well, and are relatively likely to be much worse per unit of youth exposure.

rayinerOP2y ago

That’s exactly the point though—where is the evidence that churches are doing “much worse per unit of youth exposure?” OP asserts that religious organizations are doing especially bad, but makes no effort to compare sexual abuse rates there against the base rate. OP is the one engaged in motivated reasoning.

An important fact that gets overlooked is that religious organizations are one of the few aspects of civil society that put children in contact with adults. Really the only secular organizations that do so at a large scale are daycares, schools, and sports. It makes no sense to assert, as OP did, that churches are especially full of pedophiles, without offering a comparison against the other environments where children are exposed to adults.

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Retric2y ago

The number of possible victims isn’t the limiting factor here, it’s the number of pedophiles and their ability to prey on children. A substitute teacher may teach tens of thousands of children per year, but they don’t have a position of particular trust nor are they protected by the school system.

The core complaint isn’t that the Church has more perpetrators, but rather that by protecting the perpetrators they increased the number of victims per perpetrator.

rayinerOP2y ago

Schools absolutely protect sexual abusers. At my kid’s school, it was an open secret in the 1970s through 1990s that teachers were sexually abusing students: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2019/01/29/key-sch.... This is an affluent, extremely progressive, private school in a deep blue state. It’s just about the opposite of the Catholic Church.

willcipriano2y ago

> nor are they protected by the school system.

Example from the day before yesterday: "5 school employees arrested for alleged failure to report student's sexual assault"

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/5-school-employees-arrest...

Bonus one from a couple months ago: "Knoch Primary School principal charged with failing to report alleged sexual abuse"

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/knoch-primary-school...

Retric2y ago

I don’t see why you think that supports your argument.

willcipriano2y ago

Here's another, December of last year, there are a lot of these: "Three school administrators in Bellingham accused of failing to report alleged sexual assault"

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/bellingham/school-a...

If teachers are willing to cover up for random child molesters in the community what do you think they'd do for one of their own?

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raffraffraff2y ago

I think this his the nail on the head. Any time you create a role and imbue it with unimpeachable morality or trust, grant it power, and bring it into close private contact with vulnerable persons, you have a recipe for abuse. Crime requires opportunity. Sometimes abusers are created by being placed into those roles. And of course some abusers are already fully formed, and will seek out those roles. I'm sure a lot of them they don't even do it knowingly. They gaslight and groom themselves into abusers as much as they gaslight and groom their victims. They're almost always male, except for a "rounding error". And you'll the pattern in an array of different roles: police, doctor, priest, scout master, BBC TV presenter, rock star, sports coach, therapist, charity boss. The more power and trust, and the greater the contract with the vulnerable, the more it'll happen.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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morkalork2y ago

rayinerOP2y ago

morkalork2y ago

esyir2y ago

At the end of the day, it boils down to this.

Do you rather have your kid to have big N% chance of being abused, or small n%. At a micro level, you might get more control, but at the macro level, the results in aggregate are what matter.

mlyle2y ago

> The relevant metric is number complaints normalized by the relevant potential victim population.

It's obvious there's problems with either rate you'd choose for either task.

We have varying degrees of exposure / vulnerability within the populations. Neither one really directly leads to a "risk per unit of exposure of child" or "risk of a given person being an offender".

rayinerOP2y ago

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Retric2y ago

The core complaint isn’t that the Church has more perpetrators, but rather that by protecting the perpetrators they increased the number of victims per perpetrator.

rayinerOP2y ago

willcipriano2y ago

> nor are they protected by the school system.

Example from the day before yesterday: "5 school employees arrested for alleged failure to report student's sexual assault"

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/5-school-employees-arrest...

Bonus one from a couple months ago: "Knoch Primary School principal charged with failing to report alleged sexual abuse"

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/knoch-primary-school...

Retric2y ago

I don’t see why you think that supports your argument.

willcipriano2y ago

Here's another, December of last year, there are a lot of these: "Three school administrators in Bellingham accused of failing to report alleged sexual assault"

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/bellingham/school-a...

If teachers are willing to cover up for random child molesters in the community what do you think they'd do for one of their own?

2 more replies

raffraffraff2y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse