Child sex abuse not confined to clergy - so let’s spread the indignation

IN pointing out on Tonight with Vincent Browne last week that members of the Catholic Church were not alone either in perpetrating abuse or covering it up, I was obviously not condoning abuse ...

... let alone attempting to suggest that the Catholic Church is not so bad after all.

However, this is clearly how Ryle Dwyer interpreted my statement as evidenced by his column in the Irish Examiner last Saturday.

I suppose if I was trying to say anything, it is that the Catholic Church should not be singled out with regard to the subject of child abuse, and yet that is what frequently happens.

In recent years, quite a number of teachers and social workers were investigated after allegations of child abuse were made against them, yet there was no hue and cry about this. Either we are upset about child abuse per se, or we are not.

The Church’s new child protection guidelines go further than the State’s, and yet while the former have been fiercely attacked, the latter have not.

According to one survey, 3% of children have been sexually abused by priests, which is obviously 3% too many. But we seem to save our indignation for this 3%, and spare almost none for the remaining 97%. The upshot of the attention paid to clerical sex abuse is that the public in general hugely overestimate the percentage of priests guilty of child sex abuse.

The true figure is about 4%, but according to a Royal College of Surgeons survey, 80% of the public put it higher than this, with one in three putting it in excess of 20%.

Expose clerical sex abuse by all means, but let’s equally expose all other types of abuse.

David Quinn

Park Lawn

Clontarf

Dublin 3