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A Scandalous Series
A recent series of articles produced by The Associated Press puts the sexual abuse crisis in the proper perspective. After an intensive seven-month investigation, the AP reports that there is a sexual abuse crisis in our public school system, where on any given day, there are three instances of teachers ‘hitting on’ students. (See our news story on Page 1.)
It points out – as we have been telling you – that there is a huge sexual abuse crisis in our society. Those who have been trying to make it a problem only for the clergy in the Catholic Church will be wildly disappointed by this report. It is time that the crisis be properly examined within the bigger picture.
This is in no way to lessen the severity of the problem among the Catholic clergy. Nor is it in any way an attempt to sweep that problem under the rug. Those priests who have been found guilty have been severely dealt with. The Church also has made great strides in meeting the crisis head on and in bringing the abuse crisis to the attention of the general public.
Perhaps no other public institution has dealt with the crisis more openly and more definitively than the Catholic Church. When the U.S. Bishops engaged John Jay College of Criminal Justice to do a study of the problem in the Church, it took a quantum leap in confronting the disorder. No other group has done anything close to being as dramatic as the Church did with that report.
We call upon the public schools to do a similar study so that society can begin to take steps to properly understand what is going on in a society where this injustice has become so prevalent.
Of course, if you read the New York daily newspapers, you wouldn’t even know about the AP series. As far as we have been able to ascertain, no major daily in the city reported on its findings, even though they had gone to great lengths to chastise the Catholic Church when the clergy abuse crisis broke in 2002 and ever since.
The Albany Times Union went even one better. While it did print the series, it omitted a very poignant paragraph which involved reference to the Catholic Church.
The report read, “In all, 485 misconduct cases were reported over five years, most involving sexual misconduct.
“By comparison, cases of sexual misconduct reported statewide against Catholic clergy, which caused outrage and calls for actions in Albany, totaled 300 over 57 years.
“And in school, it may be far worse than reported.”
The Times Union printed the first and third sentences but edited out the second sentence which attempted to put the Catholic Church crisis in perspective.
The Catholic League further points out that two weeks after the AP series was made available, only five newspapers in the country carried the entire series.
The Catholic League rightly asked, “So where was the Boston Globe, which broke the Catholic scandal, and all the other big media outlets? Just goes to show that it was never the molested who counted, just the identity of the molester.”
The Catholic Church has gotten a black eye from this scandal. But the Church has moved vigorously to eradicate sexual abuse as much as possible from its ranks.
The rest of society can move the dialogue on this matter forward by following the Church’s lead in dealing honestly with the problem. The first step would be to recognize that this is a much bigger problem than we originally thought and that it is present in all segments of our society.
Then we need to find out why the problem exists and how it can be eliminated in the future. Oh yes, the bishops have already formed a committee to find the root causes of the problem. Anyone else want to join the campaign? It’s a problem for everyone. Everyone should be doing something about it.
Terriers on the Ball
Congratulations to St. Francis College, Brooklyn Heights, for putting into effect a new emergency notification system.
In the event of an emergency, the system, run by the company, 3n, allows St. Francis to contact each student and employee immediately in up to seven ways including text, voice and instant message as well as e-mail. Each person selects the best way to be reached in an emergency.
The 3n system is part of the latest security plan that the College has been working on for more than a year and includes emergency drills with the New York City Office of Emergency Management, check-in procedures at the main entrance and training for various staff.
“It’s really only in the last year that the increased popularity of text messages has made an emergency notification system like this workable,” said Vice President of Financial Affairs June McGrisken. “We saw a system like this work effectively at St. John’s earlier this year and are confident that if we need to use it, ours will be effective as well.”
St. Francis College, with 2,300 students, is small enough to ensure that the most students possible will sign up for this system. We urge all students to sign up. The school has installed computers right in the lobby of the school to help them do so. There’s no excuse for not joining the system.
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