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	[Erin] Preconceived Notions of Child Abuse By Rod Dreher Beliefnet November 17, 2007 http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2007/11/erin-preconceived-notions-of-c.html We've talked a lot, on this blog, about clerical sexual abuse of children, particularly about the Scandal in the Catholic Church. I don't think anyone would categorize me as an apologist for priests who abused children or bishops who failed to take the problem seriously; I'm not overly inclined to point, for example, at similar abuse situations among other groups of people (e.g. public school teachers) as an indication that we should overlook the abuse committed by priests. To be blunt, this really isn't the kind of thing for which "everybody's doing it!" is a valid excuse. That said, there's a growing understanding that the problem of child abuse is becoming increasingly prevalent in our society. We open the newspapers on a near-daily basis to read horrific stories of the molestation and/or murder of tiny innocents, the most vulnerable members of the human family. Our disgust, outrage, and fervent desire to protect these innocent children unites us across the political divides that normally separate us; we want these crimes to stop, and we're starting to have the will as a society to take strong and decisive action against anyone guilty of these terrible acts against children. We Catholics have been facing up to the reality of clerical child abuse for the past several years now. Some of us were unafraid to confront it; others wanted to deny it or excuse it; but the fact remains that we know more about the problem than we ever did, and it will be increasingly difficult for situations to occur where the abuse of children by a priest can go on unnoticed and unchecked. We have a long way to go; but in order to get where we are now, we had to set aside our own presumptions and wishful thinking and look at the problem as it actually existed. To the extent that's been done solutions are possible; to the extent it hasn't, solutions will remain elusive, because unless we know what we're dealing with and why, we won't be able to take action honestly and completely against the underlying causes of the abuse of children by priests. The secular world is also discovering that there are things about child abuse it didn't really know, or fully understand. This article by David Crary of the Associated Press is an amazing and heartbreaking read, precisely because it is such an uncompromising look at some aspects of child abuse in our time that often go without being discussed. From the article: However, there are many other studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings: -Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005. -Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. -Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University. "All the emphasis on family autonomy and privacy shields the families from investigators, so we don't respond until it's too late," Wilson said. "I hate the fact that something dangerous for children doesn't get responded to because we're afraid of judging someone's lifestyle." The last sentence in that quote can either be a wake-up call, or it can be a trigger for knee-jerk reactions about how bad traditional family structures are, too, and how these findings don't really mean anything, and how dare we suggest that one form of family might be better at protecting children than another? But if our reaction to the article is the latter, then we're not really being any different than those Catholics who refused for so long to believe that priests could ever abuse children. If what we really care about is protecting the safety and well-being of the children in our care, we'll pay attention to the kind of vulnerabilities highlighted in this article, even if we have to lay aside some of our preconceived notions to do so.
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