That's the problem with child molesters, that they can hide quite easily. I had to interview a number of child molesters in the course of my 25 years as a U.S. government investigator. All seemed to be very admirable, normal, balanced people. Their victims rarely complain because they may not even completely understand what happened to them until they reach adulthood.

I think that it may be futile to try to screen out child molesters before they prevent their crimes - from what I understand, they almost always appear normal. There are things we can do to help prevent the crime itself, especially by eliminating situations where a child is alone with an adult - this has worked well for the Boy Scouts, but has not completely eliminated their problem.

Another thing that's essential, is very honest education of both children and adults, so they learn how to detect when a man's conduct with a child is suspicious, and so they learn to report the problem to somebody who had the ability to look into it further. Too often, people just don't realize that child molestation is going on right under their noses.

I know my viewpoint is not a popular one here, but it's clear to me that child molestation and child abuse are NOT an inherent aspect of anyone's religious faith, be it Roman Catholic or any other religion. these crimes are always aberrant behavior, and are not the norm for any religious group.

I still haven't seen data that indicates that the percentage of priests who molest, is significantly higher than the percentage of molesters among men in general. That figure of something between four and five percent seems to appear again and again, although there are places where the percentage was as high as ten percent. Yes, that's a lot of offenders - no doubt about that at all. Still, I think that fairness demands that we recognize that the overwhelming majority of priests have never and will never commit such a crime.

Just as embezzlers gravitate toward occupations where they are entrusted with money, I suppose it's true that potential child molesters are drawn toward occupations where they are entrusted with children. At one time, it was unthinkable that a priest would commit such an evil crime as child molestation, so priest-molesters could carry on undetected for years. Nowadays, every priest is suspect, so I think you'll find that the priesthood will no longer be a safe haven for child molesters - at least I hope so.
In the past five years, the Catholic Church in the U.S. has paid about two billion dollars in settlements to people who were sexually abused by priests. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of victims who were compensated, were adults who were molested as children many years ago. It would appear that the preventive measures the Catholic Church has enacted are working, but are they? How many crimes against children are happening today, and how long will it take until they are reported?

As for the Irish schools, I think it was chiefly an aspect of the attitudes of another age. Dickens wrote about the same kind of abuse in Oliver Twist, and the orphan trains of the U.S. displayed the same kind of abusive attitude toward lower-class children in America. In Ireland, the Catholic Church was a willing instrument of the same sort of abuse, but Angela's Ashes demonstrates that the attitude of abuse toward lower-class children was an intrinsic part of Irish culture into the 1960's. Why did it last so much longer in Ireland? yes, I suppose the oppressive and obedience-obsessed attitude of the Irish Catholic Church was a major factor. But once upon a time, it was almost a universal truth, that anyone confined to any institution was likely to be abused - orphanages, mental hospitals, military academies, wherever. Until about 35 years ago, the U.S. military used abusive treatment as an essential part of its training of new recruits. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was once accepted as a universal truth.

I do not believe that abuse and molestation of children are inherent aspects of the Catholic faith. They are aberrations - certainly widespread, but still not an inherent aspect of the religion.

-Joe-