That seems underdetermined. If you have 3-4% of half the population, that’s 1.5-2% of the population (which of course is somewhat of an overestimate, because we’re really considering only the adults in that male half of the population).
If each person in that 2% abuses 80 kids, how do you get a population percentage out of that without including some absolute number for population size?
?? That seems as though you’re reasoning that 3% times 50% is 150% (which isn’t true), and 150% of 80 is 120 (which is true, but not the same thing as 120%).
It also doesn’t account for children who have had multiple abusers - who exist , but probably not in the numbers necessary to have an average of 80 victims per abuser when most don’t abuse anywhere near that many ( even if an intrafamilial abuser abuses all his children and grandchildren , he’s not going to get near 80 - and most don’t abuse every child and grandchild)
Feel free to explain how I misinterpreted you, I have no false shame about occasionally making math errors and I’m always happy to get my ignorance fought.
I will gladly attend to your more detailed explanation of why you think 3% times 50% times 80 is 120%. But just looking at it without said explanation, it really doesn’t make sense, for the reasons I outlined above.
0.03 X 0.5 X 80 = 1.2. That is 1.2 times the population. Do the dimension analysis yourself.
50% of the population are men
3% of men are abusers (because priests are no more likely to be abusers than the general population)
Each abuser has 80 victims. If you look at the French report it doesn’t seem to be counting victims multiple times. Maybe they are. But unless you are triple/quadruple/quintuple counting every victim, you are positing that a huge proportion of the population is victimized at some point, even if you restrict the abuser population to adult males.
And given that the overwhelming majority of victims are males, an even bigger proportion of boys and men will have been victims.
Oh I see, you mean that if the 1.5 abusers out of every 100 persons (i.e., the 1.5%) abuse 80 victims per abuser, they’ll have abused 120 victims, i.e., more than the 100 in the sample. Quite true, thanks for the clarification.
But again, that doesn’t imply that priests are more likely than the general male population to be abusers, just that the abusers among them are likely to have a higher number of victims. As I said back in post #321, I don’t know how to reconcile that with the fact that non-Catholic congregations are apparently not considered lower risk for child sexual abuse than Catholic ones.
Wait, on a macro scale, if we assume that all men who have access to kids abuse kids as much as priest do, then the percent of people in the population who are abused would be about the same as the percent of Catholics who were abused.
And I’m pretty sure not all Catholics were abused.
Or are you saying that priests have vastly more access to kids than ministers, teachers, boy scout troop leaders, etc.? Because I don’t buy that, either.
The notion that the horrific 216,000 number of victims abused by Catholic clergy is only four percent of all the child sexual abuse victims in France over that period is extra appalling.
Are those victims only being abused by one person?
You could have multiple abusers for the same victim in multiple cases. That could skew the math significantly.
I’m not saying that the same 80 kids are victimized by that pool of abusers, of course, but I don’t doubt that a number of kids are abused by more than one person over their lifetime.
A summary of the report (in English) is available here:
The relevant statistics:
Keeping these methodological precautions in mind, the Commission arrived at an estimate of the number of child victims to have suffered sexual assault at the hands of priests, deacons, monks or nuns to be 216 000* over the period from 1950 to 2020, based on the general population survey of 28 010 persons aged 18 and over and representative of the French population in accordance with the quota method. By broadening the analysis to include persons connected to the Church (staff of Catholic schools, laypersons providing catechism or chaplaincy services, organizers of scouts or other Catholic youth movements) the estimated number of child victims rises to 330 000 for the whole of the period. This study shows that more than a third of sexual assaults within the Catholic Church were committed, not by clergy or monks, but by lay people. Due to a lack of scientific certitude, the Commission renounced trying to estimate the number of adult victims of sexual assault in the Church.
*Upper and lower limits of the 95% confidence interval are 270 000 and 165 000 respectively for this estimate.
The CIASE has made every effort to situate these cases of violence, which are extremely high in absolute terms, in the more general context of acts of sexual violence committed in our society as a whole. Two conclusions may be drawn by looking at it from this perspective.
The first, as may be expected from previous studies, is that sexual violence on an equally massive scale occurred across French society: 14.5 % of women and 6.4% of men, i.e. approximately 5 500 000 people suffered sexual assault in their childhood. Acts of sexual violence committed by clerics, monks or nuns represents just under 4% of this total. Those committed by persons connected to the Catholic Church (including laypersons) represents 6% of the total.
The second conclusion concerns the prevalence of sexual violence committed on children in different socialization environments surrounding or linked to the Catholic Church: family, friends, state school, holiday camps, sports clubs or cultural activity structures. It emerges that whilst the vast majority of sexual violence against children was perpetrated by family or friends (3.7% of persons aged 18 or over in mainland France suffered sexual abuse as children by a member of the family, 2% by a family friend and 1.8% by a friend or acquaintance) significantly more such acts were committed within the Catholic Church (1.16% by persons connected to the Catholic Church of whom 0.82% by clergy, monks or nuns) than any other sphere of socialization (0.36% in youth holiday camps, 0.34% in state school, 0.28% in sports clubs and 0.17% in the context of cultural and artistic activities). The Catholic Church is thus, with the exception of family and friendship circles, the environment in which the prevalence of sexual violence is by far the highest.
…
Still more sensitive a question is the estimated number of clergy and monks who perpetrated sexual assault over the period in question. Research, conducted with great rigor and thoroughness by the EPHE, into the archives of the Church, the justice system and the press, completed by data gathered from the appeal for testimonials, leads to an estimation of between 2900 and 3200 aggressors. This bracket constitutes a lower limit in so far as not all cases of abuse are known to the Church and not all cases which are known have led to a file being opened. It indicates a ratio of 2.5% and 2.8% of clergy and monks from 1950 to today (approximately 115 000 clergy and monks).
If, during the time frame under discussion 216,000 children were abused at a rate of 80 children per abuser, that sets the number of abusers at around 2700. If those 2700 abusers represent 1.5% of all priests who served in France during the time frame then there must have been 180,000 priests who served in France during the time frame in question.
This assumes each kid is only abused by one priest, right? It can drop below 100% if multiple priests abuse the same kids. ETA a point I see was raised.
I suppose, in France, there’s also a chicken and egg question. Did the Church facilitate pedophilia, or did pedophiles flock to these roles? Pretty much all of France is Catholic, so that would be an option for most pedophiles.
It’s not as if it’s an enormous surprise that there was pedophilia going on. The extent may not have been known, but I’ve spoken with friends who grew up Catholic before all this broke, who said, “everyone knew father Jimmy did this, that’s why he got moved to that rural, low status church.” I even know a gay guy who looked for a priest when he was a teen because he thought a priest would have sex with him. (He didn’t live near any such priests.)
That might depend on what you mean by “before all this broke”. I first remember becoming aware of in the late 80s or early 90s - This book was published in 1992. The Boston Globe stories that resulted from the investigation that the movie Spotlight follows were published in 2003. If your friend grew up in the 80s or later, the existence ( if not the extent) of the problem may have been well known but I don’t think it was well-known that the problem even existed in the early 80s and before.