UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
Pope Francis has recently stated that he’s been informed that 2% of Catholic clergy – 1 in 50 – are pedophiles.
But the number is certainly higher than that.
SNAP quotes BishopAccountability.org …
“U.S. bishops have reported receiving allegations of abuse by 6,427 priests in 1950-2013, or 5.9% of the 109,694 U.S. priests active 1950-2002, according to the John Jay report. Including the 5,356 priests ordained since 2002 brings the total to 115,050, of whom 5.6% have been accused of abuse,” according to BishopAccountability.org.
I have elsewhere read parts of the John Jay Report that indicate a figure closer to 4%.
There is apparently no telling how these rates compare with the prevalence of pedophiles in the general population, as that number is not known, though Time Magazine says …
Dr. John Bradford, a University of Ottawa psychiatrist who has spent 23 years studying pedophilia–which is listed as an illness in the manual psychiatrists use to make diagnoses–estimates its prevalence at maybe 4% of the population. (Those attracted to teenagers are sometimes said to suffer “ephebophilia,” but perhaps because so many youth-obsessed Americans would qualify, psychiatrists don’t classify ephebophilia as an illness.)
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