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All three newscasts monitored the response by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to the pedophile priests scandal. Again, ABC and NBC had correspondents on the scene at the Vatican; CBS had Elaine Quijano narrate the videotape from in front of a church in New York City. NBC's Anne Thompson picked up on a phrase from the Palm Sunday sermon by Pope Benedict XVI in which he decried the "intimidation of petty gossip." She reminded us that "petty gossip" was the phrase that church authorities used decades ago in Boston to dismiss reports of child rape.
Right in the middle of this discussion, ABC's Jim Sciutto came up with a completely confusing set of statistics. This is what he actually said: "An estimated 5% to 9% of US priests are abusers compared with 4% to 8% in the general US population; 0.08% of American teachers have been found guilty of abuse."
First, is it really true that between 4% and 8% of the entire population of this country abuses children sexually? Well no. Sciutto's reference was RegisteredOffendersList.org. It lists all registered sexual offenders, including those who have abused in the past and are no longer doing so, and those whose crimes were sexual in nature but did not involve the abuse of children.
Second, is it really true that between 5% and 9% of all Roman Catholic priests in this country are abusing children sexually? Sciutto cited "Bishop Accountability" as his source, which seems to be the official accounting by the church hierarchy. Go to the Website, however, and it is not. Bishop-Accountability.org is an activist group in Massachusetts that seeks to hold the bishops accountable for their lack of full documentation--quite different from the actual documentation.
Third, are schoolteachers really so much less abusive than priests? The difference in the percentages looks huge until one realizes that it compares apples with oranges. The 0.08% is the proportion of schoolteachers criminally convicted of the sexual abuse of children, per the Associated Press. The 5% to 9% refers to unofficially documented complaints, not guilty verdicts in a court of law.
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