I also remember reading on a recent news report about some pedophile advocate in Oregon who listed churches among many other places as a good place to get close to children.

The problem is that people are predisposed to trust those of their own religious faith, so someone with an ulterior motive who “talks the right talk” and is very personable and seems sincere can get all kinds of access to kids in churches that organizational rules and laws would not allow him in other settings.

Thankfully, more churches are becoming aware of the problem and starting to institute rules about background checks and not leaving one individual unsupervised with children. But it’s been slow progress.

Back when I was going to church camps and sleepovers and spending a lot of time with youth leaders there were all kinds of opportunities and very little oversight on who these adults were. If they were born again, and willing to volunteer – they got the job! Thankfully nothing untoward happened to me, but as I said I knew others who weren’t so fortunate.

The mormon polygamy guy (forgot his name) is also worth mentioning as a sicko that makes my blood boil. >:(

Did you even think of normalizing the statistic to the population ratios(and maybe for church attendance rates) for protestants and catholics? Your statement “Are the Protestant churches worse than the Catholic Church when it comes to abuse?” is ridiculous when you are dealing with net numbers.

Good point. I was just thinking of numbers, not percentages. Though I was still surprised at how high the Protestant church numbers were. I didn’t think abuse like that happened in those churches (with the exception of possibly a few awful people)

Regardless of that though, I agree with [name deleted -- HM] that those statistics are low, but I doubt the estimate is no worse off than any other report of sexual abuse to a minor(say from a parent, uncle, grandparent, etc). 90% of the 100,000 or so substantiated sexual abuse claims are perpetrated by a parent or other relative. I’m in a hurry so I’m not going to crunch any numbers, but using the information in your post and here I would guess that the total instances of child sex abuse that occurs in churches would be between the cases perpetrated by foster parents(.4%) and cases perpetrated by day care workers(.7%).

I would like to know the statistics for who is doing the abuse and what position they hold in the church. I’ve read many stories about sex offenders who come to a church, tell the head of the church about their past, the head of the church keeps it a secret, the sex offender molests someone, and then the church gets sued. I also remember reading on a recent news report about some pedophile advocate in Oregon who listed churches among many other places as a good place to get close to children.

My concern is that if he’s still working in a position where he has unsupervised access to young people, he may very well repeat the crime. That seems to be the pattern: Less isolated incidents and more a pattern of sexual abuse. If you have a chance to break that pattern – and spare another young person the trauma you no doubt went through – that would be something to seriously think about.

The numbers the insurance industry cited really don’t surprise me. I’ve known both men and women who admitted to me they were sexually involved with youth pastors and other male church leaders when they were kids. One of my best friends married the youth pastor – a guy about 12 years older than she – as soon as she turned 18. They’d been in a sexual relationship for several years prior.

The Catholic church sex scandals have gotten all the publicity, but I think the Protestant counterparts have just not been “outed” yet.

I am also having difficulty believing they were released by claim-type but I am glad they were.

The bigger issue for me, is how indicative is this of our culture? How large is this problem? How much is unknown and why?

The actions of mankind has not changed over time, left to its own individualism, it is overwhelmingly selfish. I would call this sin, others can label it whatever helps them digest it.

I think the Catholic church has real issues with its priesthood and the men they recruited to serve knowing many of their habits and preferences. But churches in general have allowed a lack of accountability and protocol to damage many people.

As for [name deleted -- HM], my heart goes out to you. Only you know what is the best course of action for you, so may you have the courage to stay the course you choose.

So IF we know sexual abuse is happening, why aren’t we investigating other forms? Why are we allowing Catholic church to sequester priest who have committed acts of sexual abuse? Isn’t this a form of Bedlam? They aren’t getting any psychological help, but rather being hidden from society. Then again, Acharya S makes the accusation in her book “The Christ Conspiracy” that the Church was founded by the mentally ill too, thus why the use of extreme violence and delusional ideology to force conversion. I’m not saying that is true, but it is something to ponder given that there seems to be a lot of priest who are mentally ill. Yes, I am equating sexual abuse with mental illness. The offender, not the victim, is mentally ill, but this does not mean the victim can’t become mentally ill and commit the same act later in life because they were once a victim. Again, we are talking psychological make-up and whether or not the victim receives counselling.