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	The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010 John Jay College of Criminal Justice via BishopAccountability.org May 18, 2011 http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2011_05_18_John_Jay_Causes_and_Context_Report.pdf [Links to the full text] Findings No single “cause” of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests is identified as a result of our research. Social and cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s manifested in increased levels of deviant behavior in the general society and also among priests of the Catholic Church in the United States. Organizational, psychological, and situational factors contributed to the vulnerability of individual priests in this period of normative change. The Causes and Context report provides data about the historical time period of the problem: the increase in incidence until the late 1970s and the sharp decline by 1985. Although no specific institutional cause for the increase in incidence was found, factors specific to the Catholic Church contributed to the decline in the mid-1980s. Analyses of the development and influence of seminary education throughout the historical period is consistent with the continued suppression of abuse behavior in the twenty-first century. The priests who engaged in abuse of minors were not found, on the basis of their developmental histories or their psychological characteristics, to be statistically distinguishable from other priests who did not have allegations of sexual abuse against minors.
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