(Of course a proportion of the general population commits grievous crimes against children as well… I even heard once that priests were about as likely as men in general to be molesters but I never looked for a source)
I believe it’s a little higher than general population but not by much. The sad truth is vocations with access to children have higher abuse rates (vicar, teacher, pastor, coach) because any adults with access to children have higher abuse rates. Religions authority is abused for sure, but the sad truth out of the Catholic and Anglican abuse scandals is that a fair number of abuse cases didn’t involve abuse of power. By that I mean in some cases it wasn’t an overt feature, there were cases of 14, 15 year olds acting out their attraction to older youth pastors and those people taking advantage by not saying no. That is clearly still illegal. But I only mention to illustrate that a feature of the higher abuse rates was - sadly - just the amount of contact time with children, rather than “religion” itself.
And all that’s really just to say, although I know “paedo priest” is a well established meme, the sad truth is that any contact between adults and children had to be safeguarded whether they’re priests, drag queens, or cross dressing bishops…
Seems like that stat about priests is mostly true, though hard to be sure of anything because only 1 in 10 incidents are reported.
I’m seeing numbers like 2-3% of men have committed child sexual abuse, and possibly 4% of priests. However the number of victims might be significantly higher for priests as they are encountering far more children.
Yeah sadly that’s my first thought
(Of course a proportion of the general population commits grievous crimes against children as well… I even heard once that priests were about as likely as men in general to be molesters but I never looked for a source)
I believe it’s a little higher than general population but not by much. The sad truth is vocations with access to children have higher abuse rates (vicar, teacher, pastor, coach) because any adults with access to children have higher abuse rates. Religions authority is abused for sure, but the sad truth out of the Catholic and Anglican abuse scandals is that a fair number of abuse cases didn’t involve abuse of power. By that I mean in some cases it wasn’t an overt feature, there were cases of 14, 15 year olds acting out their attraction to older youth pastors and those people taking advantage by not saying no. That is clearly still illegal. But I only mention to illustrate that a feature of the higher abuse rates was - sadly - just the amount of contact time with children, rather than “religion” itself.
And all that’s really just to say, although I know “paedo priest” is a well established meme, the sad truth is that any contact between adults and children had to be safeguarded whether they’re priests, drag queens, or cross dressing bishops…
Seems like that stat about priests is mostly true, though hard to be sure of anything because only 1 in 10 incidents are reported.
I’m seeing numbers like 2-3% of men have committed child sexual abuse, and possibly 4% of priests. However the number of victims might be significantly higher for priests as they are encountering far more children.
Thanks for researching - exactly the facts I was looking for!