Psychology Today, and the John Jay Report on Clergy Abuse

By Joey Piscitelli
Alternet
May 7, 2012

http://blogs.alternet.org/witchjoey/2012/05/07/psychology-today-and-the-john-jay-report-on-clergy-abuse/

I was prompted to write this story …. More like triggered to write this story, as a response to a column in Psychology Today by Thomas Plante, PhD. He wrote an article on his column "Do the right thing", concerning the "John Jay Report on Clergy Abuse."

It occurred to me as I stared at his article – and then at my computer; that maybe I should disassociate instead. Why not. There is an unwritten law that establishes the rules on child abuse articles; and sets boundaries for abuse victims such as myself: to refrain from writing op-eds because child abuse victims:

" have strong opinions and emotional hysteria."

I credit those last six words to Thomas Plante, PhD. May 28th, 2011. They are firmly implanted in my Post Traumatic Stress Disordered brain. If this were a supervised "step" program, I should realize that I should not be typing right now – and I should be taking medication to stop me from having emotional hysteria about clergy abuse. Perhaps medication should be prescribed to me by a psychologist who is an expert on clergy abuse victims who have "strong opinions" .

I'll go out on a limb here, and type my opinion anyway. Who knows, it may even be therapeutic, in a unprofessional way of course, but maybe that's just what I need to

veer back on the road to recovery.

The "John Jay Study on Clergy Abuse" which is apparently the self proclaimed ultimate authoritative manual on the subject, is said to be non-partial; even though the Catholic Hierarchy was a major financial contributor. It's just a minor coincidence that has no effect on the outcome of the study I'm told; so I'll keep my hysteria in check.

Dr. Thomas Plante says that the John Jay Report:

"concludes that the vast majority of clergy sex offenders are not pedophiles at all, but were situational generalists violating whoever they had access to." Ironically, Dr. Plante was a consultant on the project.

Well, I'll be darned. Stupid me – all this time I had thought that the priest who violently raped me was a pedophile, and now I find out that he was only a "situational generalist". I could clearly see now why Dr. Plante and some of the other good people at John Jay who were paid by the Catholic Church may consider me an emotional hysteric. I confused a holy priest who raped me, with a mere "situational generalist"; now I realize that I blew the whole thing out of proportion – and I probably deserved it.

The report also states that the "numbers (of abuse) as well as the style and type of abuse (in the Catholic Church) is fairly consistent with other large organizations". I've got to admit, I'm shocked again. I must have wrongfully assumed that the uncountable amount of victims alleging clergy sexual abuse in the news on a daily basis was a high figure.

The news people all over the world must have overlooked the massive allegations of sexual abuse cases at other organizations because of that hysteria Dr. Plante mentioned.

So I Googled dozens of large organizations all over the planet, and I just couldn't find any at all who have paid 3 billion dollars in sexual abuse lawsuit claims in the past 5 years.

Could it be that Google, and other search engines forgot to mention all of those other organizations who have just as many claims of child abuse? Maybe they're all conspiring against the church, and hiding all those tens of thousands of claims as well? I think an investigation into the matter is warranted!

Last but not least, The John Jay Report stated that only four percent of priests were

reported to be sex offenders. That puzzled me also. As a leader in the San Francisco Bay Area for SNAP, -The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, I have fielded several hundred calls from people alleging sexual abuse by priests for ten years.

My own records of calls and e-mails for the last ten years showed that approximately 1 in ten people who were sexually abused by clergy actually reported their cases to authorities, or made claims, or filed lawsuits. That was a head scratcher. Could it be that people who are abused in the Bay Area are the only people who fail to report incidents at such a level?

So I hit Google again, possibly instigated by that hysteria Dr. Plante mentioned; but I was obsessed with the issue. I found an article by Time magazine in 1998 that mentioned the estimated 1 in ten figure of reporting abuse also. I found several articles by child abuse organizations, and psychologists alike, that stated similar numbers. The bottom line was that child abuse cases, especially clergy abuse cases, were grossly under-reported; the percentage estimates consistently showed that anywhere from 60 to 90 percent were not reported at all. This matched my own records, and the records of many of the other child abuse advocates I interviewed as well.

So where did the John Jay report come up with the figure that only 4% of priests were alleged to be molesters? What about the 60 to 90 percent of incidents that many other professionals say are not reported? Did the John Jay investigators forget to factor those cases in?

Even the US Department of Justice states that only 25% of rape cases go reported, and that includes adults; child sex abuse cases of under-reporting are higher.

(National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice)

By the way, the University of Santa Clara shows Dr. Plante as being an employee of that Catholic University now on their website. I imagine that he earns a significantly high wage there. Gee whiz, could that influence his views on the Catholic Church and the John Jay Report?

On second thought, don't ask me; I'm a certified "strongly opinionated hysteric", who was merely touched by a "situational generalist."