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	John Jay Report Depicts Progress but Cannot Isolate Causes America Magazine May 24, 2011 http://www.americamagazine.org/content/signs.cfm?signid=721 A report prepared by researchers from New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice on the abuse of children by Catholic priests in the United States between 1950 and 2000 offers a complex portrait of the "causes and context" behind decades of sexual abuse and the sometimes ineffective or even negligent response of U.S. bishops to the problem. Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Wash., and Chair of the U.S. bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, said the exhaustive study, five years in the making, offers an explanation, but not an excuse for the abuse scandal that first engulfed the United States before surfacing throughout the global church. Still some of its conclusions have already drawn passionate criticism, and the report will surely not satisfy anyone looking for simple answers or easy targets to blame. In fact in some ways it may only lead to further confusion and outrage. Karen Terry, dean of research at John Jay and principal investigator for the study, told reporters at a press conference in Washington, D.C. on May 18: "There is no single cause of the sexual abuse crisis. The increased frequency of abuse in the 1960s and 1970s is consistent with the patterns of increased deviance of society at that time. The social influences intersected with vulnerabilities of some individual priests whose preparation for a life of celibacy was inadequate." According to the study, a comprehensive analysis of abusers did not shed any light on behavior or characteristics that could be conclusively predictive, though abusers generally suffered from "intimacy deficits" and maintained no close personal relationships before and during their years in seminary. A significant percentage had been abused themselves as children. Researchers pointed out that most of the abusers were graduates of seminaries in the 1940s and 1950s who were inadequately prepared for the emotional rigors of their lives as priests and the challenge of lifelong celibacy.
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