"THE JOHN JAY DOCUMENT 2011 – REALITY REVISED"

Thomas Doyle provides excellent commentary on the recently released John Jay report on clerical child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. I suggest you read his entire critique, but below are excerpts from his fine essay.

Fr Doyle studied all the reports on clerical abuse, including information from more than 6000 victim's attorneys. Regarding the "Woodstock Defense" in the latest John Jay report, Fr Doyle says:

The victim support groups and plaintiffs' attorneys here and abroad are seeing a significant increase in victims who were violated in the fifties and even the forties. As one of my astute friends remarked, these are the victims from the Big Band era so what does that constitute, the "Benny Goodman" defense?

There you have it!

Further:

Those who see the main conclusions from the Executive Summary as support for the bishops' blame-shifting tactics are probably right. Yet these conclusions are only a part of the whole story and in some ways they are of minor relevance. The finding that the majority of cases occurred in the 1960s and 1970s can be quickly challenged. It is more accurate to say that the majority of cases reported in the post 2002 period involved abuse that took place in the period from the sixties to the eighties. Its way off base to assume that the majority of incidents of abuse happened during this period. Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald founded the Paraclete community in 1947 to provide help to priests with problems. From the beginning he was treating priests with psycho-sexual issues and in a letter to a bishop he said that 3 out of every 10 priests admitted were there because they had sexually molested minors. Fr. Gerald wrote that letter in 1964. Unfortunately it is difficult if not impossible to do a study of abuse victims between the 30's and the 50's but Fr. Gerald's information leaves no doubt that sexual abuse by priests was a significant phenomenon long before the free-wheeling 60's and 70's. The one constant that was present throughout the entire period from before the 60's to the turn of the millennium has been the cover-up by the bishops and the disgraceful treatment of victims. The John Jay researchers were commissioned by the bishops to look into the reasons why priests molested and violated minors. They were not asked to figure out why this molestation and violation was allowed to happen. That would have been deadly for the bishops and they knew it. (The author's emphasis)

Hallelujah! Fr Doyle emphasizes the distinction between when incidents are reported and when the incidents actually took place, which is a vital distinction to be made.

Fr Doyle adds that while the report was commissioned by Roman Catholic bishops in the US and, in some areas, the researchers give the bishops a pass when they should not get a pass, the report is, by no means, a whitewash. He lists sections of the report which are quite critical of the responses by bishops to the disclosures of clerical abuse. I ask again that you please read the critique in its entirety.

From the National Catholic Reporter:

Tom Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist and long-time supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse victims.

The public disclosures of child abuse in my Roman Catholic Diocese of Houma/Thibodaux began to come to light in the latter part of the 1990s. The "boiling point", as Fr Doyle names it, was reached in the rest of the US in 2002. The national press paid scant attention to the scandal in south Louisiana dioceses at the time the "boiling point" was reached here. I suppose the media thought what was happening in our area was nothing more than an aberration in a swampy backwater.