GET RELIGION
Washington DC
November 1, 2018
By Terry Mattingly
You would think that this would be an easy question.
What is a “boy”?
Now, I am not talking about all those cute posters about what happens when you mix noise and dirt. I am actually talking about a term linked to some of the most important facts at the heart of the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis.
As it turns out, “boy” is an almost useless word, in the context of news coverage. If you look in one major online dictionary and this is what you will find:
boy
noun …
1 a: a male child from birth to adulthood
OK, so we are dealing with a male somewhere between birth and, what, age 21?
With that question in mind, consider the top of the following Associated Press report — “Church covered up priest’s abuse of 50 boys” — about another horrible case that has jumped off the back burner and into the headlines:
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.