By Jane Cowan
ABC News
May 18, 2011
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/19/3220702.htm?section=justin
[the report]
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| The report says only a small minority of abusive priests met the clinical definition of paedophiles. (ABC News: Gary Rivett) |
The largest ever study on the sexual abuse crisis inside the Catholic Church in the United States has found that neither homosexuality nor celibacy are to blame.
The report, commissioned by America's Catholic bishops, discounts a number of theories that have been previously floated to explain abuse by priests.
It finds gay priests were no more likely to abuse children than heterosexual ones, and that the celibate culture of the priesthood was not to blame either.
The report also says only a small minority of abusive priests met the clinical definition of paedophiles.
Instead, researchers conclude priests were under stress, ill-prepared to deal with the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and '70s, and poorly monitored.
The multi-million-dollar report has been closely watched because of the unprecedented access researchers were given to priests' records, including the results of psycho-sexual testing.
The researchers conclude it is not possible to identify abusive priests in advance.
But sex abuse survivors' groups have criticised the report, saying it is a mistake to depict abusive priests as nice guys who were simply confused by the 1960s.
Some advocates for survivors say it is also wrong to focus on the abuse rather than its cover-up.
Earlier this week, Pope Benedict issued new guidelines to bishops, encouraging them to report all suspected cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests.
Mailed to bishops around the world, the guidelines were the latest effort to eradicate child sex abuse in the church.
Bishops were told to cooperate with police, but they were not required to report allegations to the authorities if local law did not require it.
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