Reply #8: Big, big problems with this "study."

[trotsky]

Limiting their study to plausible accusations made between 1950 and 1992, John Jay researchers reported that about 4 percent of the 110,000 priests active during those years had been accused of sexual misconduct involving children

I underlined those three words. Why? Because we know, for a fact, that the church ACTIVELY COVERED IT UP. Most especially if you are only looking at data before 1992!

Then there's another problem.

Experts disagree on the rate of sexual abuse among the general American male population, but Allen says a conservative estimate is one in 10.

From the wording of this, it would seem they are comparing the rate at which priests bugger little boys to the rate at which non-priests commit ANY kind of sexual abuse - i.e., abuse against children, women, or even other men. In fact, if you look at page 2 of this document you'll see that ~10% matches up with many studies of men in the general population regarding OVERALL sexual abuse.

Not to mention the great other observations upthread, most notably the one that remarks how all those years of study and training produce at the very least don't produce a human being any MORE moral than the rest of us. What an unsurprising result.