Accuracy in reporting
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Accuracy in reporting

There’s a group of abuse victims out there who are very critical of the media coverage of the Scandal. They have set up a web site called “Promoting Accurate Reporting on the Crisis in the Church”. Their primary thesis seems to be that the Boston Globe, primarily, and others have underreported the cases of abuse of girls and women, causing many female victims not to come forward. They say that this has allowed the Church to scapegoat gay priests. Among their assertions is that one-third or more of the cases of abuse by clergy involved abused girls.

The problem is that I’ve been all through the web site and there is no evidence for the claim. Now, we know that there are a number of female victims. But whatever sources on the site that claim a high number do so based on “estimates” and guesses. When pressed, the site’s authors say that since bad reporting has discouraged women from coming forward, they can’t get an accurate number. That’s a conveniently self-fulfilling statement.

It would be one thing if this group were complaining about the Globe reporters’ shabby treatment of them and other victims and even for not focusing enough on female victims. Okay. But why does it concern them so much that one of the steps proposed to fix the problem is to keep homosexuals out of the priesthood? Even if the 37 percent figure is correct, that means more than 60 percent of victims are male. You could stop a lot of homosexual activity between adult men and teens by making sure that the priesthood is “straight.”

Something tells there’s another agenda at work here.

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