11,000 Yes, another number.
We have followed the Catholic Church sexual abuse story off and on, but never had an idea of how many people were affected. We'd read of 500 here (Boston) and 500 there (Los Angeles), but never got a sense of the total.
In a Reuters
story about the church's financial woes, we read:
Nearly 11,000 people have accused priests of child sexual abuse from 1950 through 2002, according to a church-commissioned study released this year. There could be thousands more who have not yet come forward.
So, there you have it. A number you can refer to in future debates.
One of the reasons we're interested in the numbers game is that, if another organization with less public support (e.g. something 'leftist') generated those kind of abuse statistics, you'd hear nothing but a roar of outrage - along with 'proof' that such people are degenerate, immoral, and worthy of hatred.
posted by Quiddity at 12/29/2004 01:19:00 AM
The statement that I found stunning was in the report by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I'm paraphrasing heavily, but in essence they said "We can't put these fuckers in the church hierarchy behind bars because we didn't know that we had to have a law against pimping children to known child molesters under color of authority."
