America's legal system has become the envy of the world by promising "equal justice for all." We don't seek different penalties for a given offense on the basis of a defendant's religion or economic status. Unless, of course, the defendant happens to be the Catholic Church.
How else can we explain the fervor of abuse lawsuits against the Church, while no comparable attention is paid to public schools? There, sex abuse is statistically hundreds of times more prevalent, but without the context of religion or private assets.
A 2004 study by the U.S. Department of Education showed that nearly 10 percent of America's public school students have endured unwanted sexual attention from teachers or school employees. Fully 6.7 percent reported suffering sexual "contact misconduct" — which may range from pinching, to kissing, to full-scale sexual relations with a school employee. Meanwhile, it has become common for school officials, fearing scandal, to release offenders with a favorable job recommendation. Michael Crowley, senior editor of The New Republic, writes that administrators actually refer to this practice as "passing the trash."
Sex abuse is intolerable — regardless of the context. Abusers deserve the fullest punishment of law, and it makes no difference whether the abuser is a teacher or a priest. So why does our attention focus almost exclusively on the church?
San Diego County is home to one million Catholics. About 150 abuse claims have been filed, representing approximately 0.015 percent — fifteen-thousandths of one percent — of the local Catholic population. And these claims have been aggregated over a 50-year period. In other words, public school students are statistically about 450 times more likely to suffer sexual abuse at school today than San Diego County Catholics have been, over the past 50 years, in their parishes.
For a better understanding, suppose you could use one pencil to represent a single allegation of sex abuse. Your desk drawer can hold 150 pencils — the total number of complaints against the Diocese dating back half a century.
Now imagine 3.3 million pencils. Most of us can't. So, think of a chain of pencils, end-to-end, about 400 miles long — starting in Temecula and stretching all the way to San Francisco Bay. Each pencil represents one child from the 6.7 percent of students who reported suffering sexual abuse from a school employee in the government's 2004 study.
Should we find this surprising? We know the Church's official teaching on sex outside of marriage, and the sanctity of the sexual relationship. Should it shock us to know that sex abuse is about 4,500% more prevalent in public schools, where we preach a values-free religion of "tolerance" toward every sexual urge, with no mention of marriage?
Shouldn't we instead be celebrating the success of the Church, in keeping sex abuse almost nonexistent by comparison?
Nowhere do we read about $100 million lawsuits against offending public school employees, schools or districts — despite the facts reported by their own federal governing authority. The few living Catholic priests named in the complaints don't figure prominently either. Why?
Ignoring religion for a moment, the answer is private assets. San Diego County contains some of the world's most valuable land, and Catholic parishes collectively represent a lot of real estate. If there were some way to aggregate the land assets of individual parishes, and declare them to be the property of a single entity — the Diocese of San Diego — some lawyers might view the church as a $100 million opportunity just waiting to happen. And against the Church, which created society's concept of sexual morality, allegations of sex abuse carry a greater retributive power than slippery sidewalks or too-hot coffee.
The situation could hardly be more ironic. Lawsuits could threaten to dismantle our Diocese and close Catholic schools. The social-welfare functions of the Church, from caring for the sick to feeding the homeless, could ultimately be damaged beyond repair. And why? Because the Church's sex-abuse record is 450 times safer than that of the typical public school?
Sex abuse is a hideous crime. But these parish lawsuits are about a different kind of abuse. By intentionally "singling out" the least offender to pay the greatest damages, they're an abuse of America's legal system — and one of the most egregious examples of discrimination on record.
