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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32173 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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The church has made genuine progress in addressing child sexual abuse, but it remains a problem and lots of that progress is being undone because the faction in control of the Vatican right now has too few qualified personnel to let them face even minor consequences for negligence or complicity. In any case the biggest child sex abuse crisis, proportionately, was the public school system and priests had a more or less statistically average rate of committing that particular crime.

but it remains a problem

No it doesn't. Others have covered the fact that public schools are worse, but I'll add that sex abuse also happens to be adjacent to the "but muh mass shooting child abuse, if it saves just one life we are justified in banning our outgroup".

Hence, one should expect that the statistically inevitable sex abuse should be over-prosecuted/overreacted to in the less popular/out groups, like the Church and the Scouts, and under-prosecuted/underreacted to in the more popular/in groups, like LGBT advocacy groups and Virginia school districts.

It's worth noting, of course, that 60 years ago the two groups were on opposite sides- immunity from outrage comes and goes as political power waxes and wanes.

but it remains a problem

The delta between abuse within the Catholic Church and in public schools is well documented, and supports the (in my opinion obvious[1]) conclusion that your children are less likely to be abused in a Catholic school than in a secular one.

[1]: It seems like the obvious answer that a Catholic organization, which treats the family, and especially children, as the most important part of society and worthy of the most protection, would be a safe place for children. The (false) idea that Catholic priests are somehow more likely than anybody else to abuse children (in reality they are less likely) only had staying power as a meme because of how counterintuitive it seemed. "Man bites dog" and all that.

The (false) idea that Catholic priests are somehow more likely than anybody else to abuse children (in reality they are less likely)

According your link, Catholic priests are less likely than school teachers to abuse children ... and both are orders of magnitude more likely than anybody else. Compare its stated 10K abuse allegations from 100K priests (4,392/4%) to its remaining 310K abuse allegations from 260M non-priest adults in the US and the former is about a factor of 100 higher ... but then consider that, to have the stated 5% abuser rate, the 4M teachers in the US must have 200K abusers among them, and at even 2 incidents per abuser teacher (still less than the stated rate among abuser priests) that wouldn't leave any allegations left for non-priest non-teachers.

Maybe this makes sense, at least after accounting for rounding errors, in a Willie Sutton "Why do you rob banks?" "Because that's where the money is." sense? But I have to wonder if these numbers are just inconsistent because some of them are incorrect, or at best inconsistently defined.

but it remains a problem

The problem was blown out of proportion to an absurd extent. If you're bothered by what's going on in the Catholic church, you should be livid at what's going on in public schools.

I never claimed it was a bigger problem than what goes on in public schools or the BSA or whoever else.

The problem was blown out of proportion to an absurd extent.

Numerically, maybe. A bigger problem is that the offending priests were moved rather than removed. The corruption went pretty high in an organization meant to be better than that.

When someone says "rampant" I tend to think of the issue is indeed numeric in nature.

That's true. I do think "rampant" also has an emotional meaning though of just "much more frequent than it should be."

Do the public schools have a similar history of using institutional power and processes to protect chronic abusers, conceal abuse, and lean on victims to keep silent?

Yes.

This response made me laugh so hard (in agreement).

Might we share the joke?

There's not really a joke per se, but I found the directness and bluntness of the response to your (kinda gotcha) question amusing, and felt a bit like stating the obvious.

Yes, of course public school have used their institutional power to cover up scandals that occur within their institutions.

Eh, it as a genuine question. I hate the public school system and am entirely ready to believe accusations against them; I would like some evidence to base the belief on, though. I can totally believe that covering up molestation is something they'd do, but I've seen actual evidence of it for the Catholic Church, and I haven't seen any of the same scope for the public schools.

and I haven't seen any of the same scope for the public schools

Depends on whether or not you accept pushing weird sex stuff in classrooms and "don't worry, we'll help fix your sexuality so that your big, bad parents won't know" as being molestation.

Personally, if micro-aggression is how [the public schools and those that agree with the weird sex stuff] in aggregate want to judge the world, I fail to see how their actions don't count as micro-molestations.

Sort of?

Look, I'm not defending the Church here, I just think the focus this issue gets is ridiculously disproportionate.

The question was genuine, I have no idea what the correct answer is in the case of the schools, but it seems like a relevant question. Thanks for the info!

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