Thursday, August 9, 2012

Studies show religious sex offenders do more harm

Thanks to BaptistPlanet, these two eye-opening studies were recently brought to my attention.

1.  In Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, a study examined "associations between self-reported religious affiliations and official offense histories among 111 incarcerated adult male sexual offenders. Four categories of religiosity were devised according to self-reported continuities and discontinuities in life-course religious affiliations: atheists, dropouts, converts, and stayers. . . .  Stayers (those who maintained religious involvement from childhood to adulthood) had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims, than other groups. Results challenge assumptions that religious involvement should, as with other crime, serve to deter sexual offending behavior."

2.  In the Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, an article reported on a study comparing twenty-four male clergy who were accused of sexual offenses with twenty-four male sex-offender controls who were matched on offense type, age, education and marital status. "The most noteworthy features differentiating the clerics from highly-educated matched controls were that clerics had a longer delay before criminal charges were laid, or lacked criminal charges altogether, and they tended to use more force more often in their offenses."

Thus, those men who were the most consistently religious were also the men who had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims. The very fact of religiosity seems to be a factor that gives rise to more sexual offenses -- perhaps because religiosity allows for the "repent and repeat" model which results in "more victims."

Not only does religiosity itself form a factor that results in more sex-abuse victims, but for clergy, it also means that the perpetrators will be able to get away with their crimes more frequently. And that their victims will suffer the use of force more often.

Meanwhile . . . Southern Baptist leadership remains in la-la-land on this issue, refusing to address clergy sex abuse in a systematic denominational manner and leaving many thousands of kids and congregants at greater risk.