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	Victims Groups Dispute Study of Priest Sex Abuse Daily World May 20, 2011 http://www.dailyworld.com/article/20110520/NEWS01/105200302/Victims-groups-dispute-study-priest-sex-abuse Advocacy groups for victims of abuse by Roman Catholic priests Wednesday questioned the findings of a study that concluded the majority of cases occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, a time of upheaval in social behaviors. The study was commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and conducted by researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, "the social influences intersected with vulnerabilities of individual priests whose preparation for a life of celibacy were inadequate," lead study investigator Karen Terry said at a news conference. The criminal justice college was chosen to conduct the study in part because it had no prior relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, said Diane Knight, who chairs the National Review Board. Knight's lay group was established by the bishops' conference to prevent sexual abuse of minors by people serving the Roman Catholic Church. Said Terry: "The writing was ours. All the conclusions were ours." Thanks to societal changes and stepped-up prevention efforts by the Catholic Church, the number of cases of abuse by priests began a "marked decline in the 1980s that continues today, Terry said. Only seven cases that occurred in the past year have been reported, she said. Knight called the problem "historical," but Barbara Dorris, outreach director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said recent victims of abuse are still too young to come forward and may never reveal what happened to them. One of the main reasons abuse has continued is "a lack of accountability and transparency in the church," said Nick Ingala, a spokesman for Voice of the Faithful, a Boston-based group that supports survivors of clergy sexual abuse. "The bishops have not been held responsible for keeping priests (known to be abusers) in the ministry," he said. Both Dorris and Ingala say the problem is ongoing and cited the arrest in February of four Philadelphia-area priests on charges of sexually abusing or endangering minors in the 1990s. A fifth defendant, the former secretary of clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, has been charged with felony endangerment for placing the priests in positions that gave them access to minors. When asked about the Philadelphia situation at Wednesday's news conference, Bishop Blase Cupich of the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., said he did not yet know the details, but "whatever happened is an anomaly."
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