The Media's Double-standard in Coverage of Clergy Sex Abuse: Opinion

By Bill Donohue
NJ.com
May 31, 2013

http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2013/05/the_medias_double-standard_in.html

Rev. Michael Fugee appeared in court May 21, 2013, on charges of violating a court-sanctioned agreement that bars him from working with children. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League says Fugee's crime has been overplayed by the media and sex abuse by Catholic clergy is practically nonexistent.

The anger that practicing Catholics feel when they hear stories about priestly sexual abuse is palpable. The anger is directed at the offending priests and his enabling bishop. Fortunately, this a problem that is practically nonexistent in the Catholic church today. The numbers don’t lie.

The timeline for the lion’s share of abuse cases is not in doubt: the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. This was when the sexual revolution hit our culture like a tidal wave, engulfing even Catholic seminaries; it ended soon after the discovery of AIDS in 1981.

Here’s the good news: According to the Annual Reports on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, prepared by CARA, a Georgetown University research institute, over the past 10 years, the average number of credible accusations made annually against approximately 40,000 priests has been in the single digits. In the 2012 Annual Report, there was a total of six. Too bad there was a media blackout of this story.

There is no organization in the nation today that has less of a problem with sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic church. But one would never know that by listening to late-night talk show hosts, and the likes of Bill Maher. They would have the audience believe that nothing has changed. To top things off, the media often fail to adequately report on this problem in the non-Catholic population.

Just recently, a rabbi from Lakewood pleaded guilty to abusing a minor. He forced an 11-year-old boy to have sex, molesting him in the woods, in his car and in the basement of a synagogue. The boy’s father, also a rabbi, brought this to the attention of his Orthodox community, seeking justice in a rabbinical court. Nothing was done. The police were not notified.

This went on for two years. The boy was taken to a therapist, but she also refused to notify the authorities. The boy’s father finally reported this to law enforcement, and for this he was punished by his community: He lost his job and was forced to move his family out of state. Sad to say, but failure to notify the police, and neighborhood reprisal against the complainant, is common in the Orthodox Jewish community.

The media barely touched this story. What was most astonishing, there were no calls for punishing the leaders who failed to report the crime. Does anyone really believe that if the rabbi had been a priest, and none of his superiors had reported this to the authorities, that there wouldn’t have been calls for removing the guilty parties from their posts?

There is a double standard. The Rev. Michael Fugee, who had groped a teenage boy 12 years ago, consented to a legal agreement not to be around minors in an unsupervised capacity. He violated that agreement, and for this both he and the vicar general discharged with overseeing the agreement have resigned. My complaint has been directed at efforts to force Newark Archbishop John J. Myers to quit over this matter: While the buck stops at the top, not everything done on the watch of the boss can plausibly be attributed to him.

Why is it that the religious superiors of a raping rabbi who failed to call the cops are not the source of condemnation by editorial writers and politicians, but Myers is in their sights for not policing a groping priest? Moreover, imagine the reaction if a Catholic community sought reprisal against a complainant. Maher would have fun with that one.

Catholics are fed up with the double standard, and with the failure to acknowledge that great progress has been made in the Catholic Church. Most priests and bishops are good guys. They deserve to be treated better, and they certainly deserve to be treated fairly.

Bill Donohue is president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Share your thoughts at njvoices.com.