Donuel says: In this case as many little girls were raped as little boys.

Which case is this, Donuel? I'm having trouble finding statistical information in the Pennsylvania report. The 887-page report gives a lot of information, but I haven't found a statistical analysis of the data collected in the investigation.

The most comprehensive study I know of, is the 2004 John Jay Report (click) conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. For most of the crimes listed, boys were victims about 4 times as often as girls. The introduction to the Pennsylvania report says that most of the 1,000 victims were boys, but that there were also girls.

MG, now that I've looked through the Pennsylvania report, it's clear that the crimes covered by the report had already been dealt with by some sort of settlement or criminal prosecution. The report's introduction says that most likely there were thousands of other cases that were not reported, or for which records had been lost or destroyed.

What this Pennsylvania report does, is a comprehensive study of how dioceses handled the crimes that were reported to them - a study focused not on the abusers, but on the management of the dioceses and their response to this abuse. And it's not a pretty picture. The report covers six dioceses - and not one of these dioceses responded to these crimes in what I would consider to be an admirable fashion. Not one. Maybe they did the right thing under certain bishops but not under others - I haven't gotten to that point yet.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia was covered in a grand jury investigation a few years ago, and that investigation resulted in convictions of some leaders in the diocese. I don't know what happened in the eighth diocese in the state, which was covered in another grand jury report.

In 2002, the U.S. Catholic bishops set up a fairly good system for preventing and responding to incidents of child sexual abuse by priests and by church employees. It did not, however, set any standards for bishops. This grand jury report is a good start on that path. I wonder how the bishops will respond.

-Joe-

P.S. This is a very long report, but the introduction is of manageable length. Please take the time at least to read the introduction to the Pennsylvania report (click).