Conference Examines Sexual Abuse in Church, by Deborah Gyapong, B.C. Catholic, June 8, 2011

Conference Examines Sexual Abuse in Church

By Deborah Gyapong
B.C. Catholic
June 8, 2011

http://bcc.rcav.org/canadian/792-deborah-gyapong

Abuse victim James Niksik of St. Michael, Alaska, reacts during a 2007 news conference to discuss a $50 million settlement reached with the Jesuits' Portland, Ore.-based province to resolve more than 100 claims of clergy sex abuse. In background are abuse victims Elsie Boudreau of Anchorage, Alaska, and Alphonsus Abouchuk of St. Michael, Alaska.

OTTAWA (CCN)--People in the Catholic Church want to talk about the sexual abuse crisis in a serious way, to discover what we have learned as a people and where the Lord is calling us, said Dr. Nuala Kenny.

Canadian Catholics need to focus on what can be done to transform the systemic and cultural problems that led the Church to respond to the crisis the way it did, the pediatrician, Professor Emeritus of bioethics at Dalhousie University and Sister of Charity said.

To that end, she and McGill University religious studies professor Dan Cere through McGill's Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR) have organized a conference Oct. 14 and 15 in Montreal on Trauma and Transformation: The Catholic Church and the Sexual Abuse Crisis. The conference takes place a couple of days before the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) holds its annual plenary session.

The first speaker at the conference is the lead author of the two studies on clerical abuse in the United States done by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice: law and criminal justice professor Karen Terry.

While Terry will lay out the most recent research, Kenny said the most recent John Jay study looked at the causes and context for clergy sexual abuse. The first study, released in 2004, examined the nature and scope of the crisis. Both independent studies were commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The recent study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice about clerical sexual abuse in the United States did not reveal much observers of the Canadian Church did not already know, said the Sister of Charity.

All the information that helps us get better information about the nature of this crisis is important and will help bring greater transparency, Kenny said. "There has been such secrecy and avoidance of this issue."

But she said the conclusions of the study were similar to conclusions of the 1990 Winter Commission Report on clerical abuse in the St. John's Diocese in Newfoundland. Kenney served as one of the commissioners and has since advised the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on the clerical abuse crisis. Like the recent John Jay study, the Winter Report concluded there is no single cause for the crisis but multiple factors, she said.

The recent John Jay study confirmed that clerical celibacy and homosexuality were not the causes.

However, media coverage has stressed the role of the 60s cultural revolution, in other words, "the Culture made me do it," she said, adding she is surprised the John Jay report devoted so much attention to this factor. It examines other factors as well that have not received the same attention.

The recent study focused on understanding offenders and the nature of the offence and whether one can predict this behavior, she said. It also addressed the role of seminary formation.

The John Jay study did not look at the systemic and cultural factors within the Church as to why this happened, she said.

"Our concern is why did we respond the way we did as a Church."

"It's the response that has people angry," she said. "Why did we not protect the vulnerable?" Why did we preferentially protect the position of priests and their image? What does this have to do with who we are as a church?

One problem is most of the information John Jay's researchers gathered came from the bishops themselves, she said. That's problematic, because whenever outside legal authorities investigate abuse in the Church, the numbers are always higher, she said.

A recent Grand Jury in Philadelphia identified more than 20 priests who had been faced with credible sexual abuse complaints, she said. "Secrecy and non-reporting has been a concern."

What the John Jay studies have revealed is the vast majority of clerical abusers do not fall into the classic pedophile or hebophile (attracted to teenagers) profile, she said.

While the report notes that during the 1970s homosexuals enrolled U.S. seminaries in increased numbers, Kenney stressed "the vast majority of mature homosexuals have no preference to children or minors."

The report shows that even with an increased proportion of homosexuals in the priesthood, complaints of abuse incidents dropped significantly and leveled off after the late 1970s. The report also indicated homosexual priests who violate their vows of chastity are more likely to do so with an adult.

More than 50 per cent of abusers were sexually immature or conflicted, living in situations of isolation and alcohol was almost always a precipitating factor, said Kenney.

"The more isolated our priests, the less support they get," she said.

The conference will stress transformation and moving ahead, she said. She hopes it will not focus on the negative, though she added, not talking about the problem "has been part of the problem."