Non Socialist

By James Tillman and John Jalsevac

WASHINGTON, DC, April 1, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the last several weeks such a quantity of ink has been spilled in newspapers across the globe about the priestly sex abuse scandals, that a casual reader might be forgiven for thinking that Catholic priests are the worst and most common perpetrators of child sex abuse.

But according to Charol Shakeshaft, the researcher of a little-remembered 2004 study prepared for the U.S. Department of Education, “the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”

After effectively disappearing from the radar, Shakeshaft’s study is now being revisited by commentators seeking to restore a sense of proportion to the mainstream coverage of the Church scandal.

According to the 2004 study “the most accurate data available at this time” indicates that “nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.”

“Educator sexual misconduct is woefully under-studied,” writes the researcher. “We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators and targets.  There are many questions that call for answers.“

In an article published on Monday, renowned Catholic commentator George Weigel referred to the Shakeshaft study, and observed that “The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague” in which Catholic priests constitute only a small minority of perpetrators.

While Weigel observes that the findings of Shakeshaft’s study do nothing to mitigate the harm caused by priestly abuse, or excuse the “clericalism” and “fideism” that led bishops to ignore the problem, they do point to a gross imbalance in the level of scrutiny given to it, throwing suspicion on the motives of the news outlets that are pouring their resources into digging up decades-old dirt on the Church.

“The narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down,” he writes. 

Weigel observes that priestly sex abuse is “a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared,” and that in recent years the Church has gone to great lengths to punish and remove priestly predators and to protect children. The result of these measures is that “six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members.”

Despite these facts, however, “the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young.”

Outside of the Church, Shakeshaft is not alone in highlighting the largely unaddressed, and unpublicized problem of child sex abuse in schools. Sherryll Kraizer, executive director of the Denver-based Safe Child Program, told the Colorado Gazette in 2008 that school employees commonly ignore laws meant to prevent the sexual abuse of children.

“I see it regularly,” Kraizer said. “There are laws against failing to report, but the law is almost never enforced. Almost never.”

“What typically happens is you’ll have a teacher who’s spending a little too much time in a room with one child with the door shut,” Kraizer explained. “Another teacher sees it and reports it to the principal. The principal calls the suspected teacher in and says ‘Don’t do that,’ instead of contacting child protective services.”

“Before you know it, the teacher is driving the student home. A whole series of events will unfold, known to other teachers and the principal, and nobody contacts child services before it’s out of control. You see this documented in records after it eventually ends up in court.”

In an editorial last week, The Gazette revisited the testimony of Kraizer in the context of the Church abuse scandal coverage, concluding that “the much larger crisis remains in our public schools today, where children are raped and groped every day in the United States.”

“The media and others must maintain their watchful eye on the Catholic Church and other religious institutions,” wrote The Gazette, “But it’s no less tragic when a child gets abused at school.”

In 2004, shortly after the Shakeshaft study was released, Catholic League President William Donohue, who was unavailable for an interview for this story, asked, “Where is the media in all this?”

“Isn’t it news that the number of public school students who have been abused by a school employee is more than 100 times greater than the number of minors who have been abused by priests?” he asked.

“All those reporters, columnists, talking heads, attorneys general, D.A.’s, psychologists and victims groups who were so quick on the draw to get priests have a moral obligation to pursue this issue to the max.  If they don’t, they’re a fraud.”

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December 9, 2009, 8:12 am

By Kevin “Coach” Collins

Detroit’s school system is disintegrating by the week.
Detroit has sunk to robbing its own teachers to scrape payroll funds together. Public School teachers are being extorted by their City with the full cooperation of their own union.
Under a proposal submitted for membership ratification each INDIVIDUAL teacher will be forced to “loan” the City of Detroit $10,000 in $250.00 increments ripped out of their bi-monthly checks for 40 weeks starting in January. These “loans” are repayable upon retirement or resignation WITHOUT interest.
If this story was happening under George Bush in a Republican state instead of in liberal Democrat Detroit Michigan it would be the lead story across America.

Bad choice; worse choice

The alternative plan, in case the victims turn this one down, is for the school system to cut teacher salaries by $36,000!
How extorting $10,000 “voluntarily” from the teachers would solve the problem, but $36,000 involuntarily extorted from these teacher victims is required to solve the crisis wasn’t explained.

Maybe it’s time to just shut Detroit down

The National Assessment of Educational Progress that measures the mathematics abilities of grade school children released a report this week showing Detroit’s 4th and 8th graders had the worst scores in the country and the history of these tests.
Just 31% of 4th graders and 23% of 8th graders scored at or above grade level.
Fifty years of corrupt Democrat governance has finally crushed the last flickers of life out of Detroit’s schools.
Keep in mind Detroit is the city that recently saw its Council President (John Conyers’ wife Monica) sent to federal prison for SELLING her vote to a contractor.
A City without a functioning public school system can’t survive no matter how the media lies about the situation. People can’t live where their children can’t get educated.

It’s everybody’s fault so it’s NOBODY’S fault

Naturally all the liberal Democrats concerned blamed everybody else.
“The principals were to blame.”

“The curriculum was at fault.”

Of course the crooks in the City government WERE NOT to blame nor were the Democrat Governor Jennifer Granholm or the parents of the school kids who don’t do their job of seeing to their own child’s progress or attending parent/teacher nights. PTA meetings? Please.

The worst part of this story is that it can and very well might happen in your Democrat controlled city. The problem is liberal Democrats not school kids. Where liberal Democrats govern our towns cities and now even our nation; failures follow.
We can stop this creeping decay of our cities but not by sitting around and watching. Get educated. Vote in local school board elections. Help register all of your friends and family and get them to the polls on Election Day. Write letters and make phone calls. Make sure your Congressman’s staff comes to know your name.

Make saving America your part time job.
If you personally don’t step up and fight to save America we will lose our beloved country and all the blood sweat and tears shed to create this, the greatest country, the brightest light, ever known to mankind will be extinguished by the Chicago thugs running our government.

What have you done to save American freedoms today?

Sources:

http://gateway.andohs.net/player/?sid=826&nid=2920

http://detnews.com/article/20091208/SCHOOLS/912080403

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/19867343/detail.html

This day in history December 9

1835 The Republic of Texas captures San Antonio Texas during the Texas war for independence. Eventually Texas and Hawaii become the only two sovereign nations to join the union and become states.

Comments on this or any other Collins Report essay can be sent to kcoachc “at” gmail.com