Sexual revolution of 1960s-70s drove priest sex abuse, says study

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A long-awaited study on the “causes and context” of the priest child sexual abuse scandal, commissioned by U.S. bishops in 2006 and released Wednesday, blames the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, not celibacy or homosexuality, for the crisis that has rocked the Roman Catholic church.

While the report largely paints the crisis as a historical blip in the history of the church, “this in no way should lull us as a church into complacency,” said Diane Knight of Milwaukee, who chairs the bishops’ National Review Board.

The study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City found no single cause for the crisis, but said child abuse by priests increased in the ’60s, peaked in the ’70s, was in “sharp decline by 1985” and the number of new reports “continues to remain low.”

“Social and cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s manifested in higher levels of deviant behavior in the general society and also among priests in the Catholic Church in the United States,” the report said. “Features and charac teristics of the Catholic Church, such as an exclusively male priesthood and the commitment to celibate chastity, were invariant during the increase, peak and decrease in abuse incidents, and thus are not causes of the ‘crisis.’ ”

The report said the incidence of abuse declined as seminaries began to offer “human formation” curricula to prepare priest candidates for a celibate life.

Critics of the church said the report is too quick to declare the crisis a thing of the past and to blame it on past societal upheaval, and said it doesn’t go far enough in holding bishops accountable for giving greater comfort to abusers than to their victims.

“Blaming the whole thing on the sexual revolution doesn’t explain how a lot of these priests got transferred (to unwitting new parishes) again and again,” said Dan Frondorf of Cincinnati, who said he was abused as a minor in 1983 by now-defrocked priest Lawrence Strittmatter. “That has nothing to do with the social climate of the time and everything to do with the bishops’ response.”

David Clohessy of St. Louis, founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said “the report essentially dodges the crucial question: Why don’t bishops quickly out and oust child-molesting clerics the first time they sexually assault a child?”

The report said silence by the young victims “is one reason why the abusive behavior persisted.” When they learned of abuse, diocesan leaders usually acted, but “the response typically focused on the priest-abusers rather than on the victims,” it said. “Leaders sought to rehabilitate abusers rather than calling police.”

The report also blamed the news media for focusing on “laggard” bishops rather than “innovators” who were trying to protect minors, “further perpetuating the image that the bishops as a group were not responding to the problem of sexual abuse of minors.”

Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the Cincinnati archdiocese, said officials have made major policy changes in recent years, including criminal background checks, fingerprinting and training for anyone who comes into regular contact with minors. He said he doesn’t know if the John Jay study can point the way to any further reform “because we already have very strong policies in place.”