John Jay College Researcher Margaret Smith

Presents

Interim “Causes & Context” Report January 4, 2010

New York VOTF Meeting
Submitted by Francis X. Piderit

On Monday, January 4th, Professor Margaret Smith from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was the featured speaker at the monthly meeting of the New York VOTF affiliate. Smith, the mid-day speaker at the national VOTF convention held on Long Island at the end of October, gave an expanded interim report on the “Causes & Context” study now underway as she spoke before a New York audience of 60, which included representatives from VOTF affiliates in Westchester, Brooklyn and Queens, as well as interested members of the New York survivor community.

The presentation included more detailed data showing the distribution of incidence of abuse between 1950 and 2007 than was presented to the VOTF national convention audience. The graph of the total number of reported incidents shows a sharp increase in the 1960s, peaking in the 1970s, and then declining sharply in the 1980s and 1990s. A comparison between data from the John Jay historical study and data gathered since 2002 by CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) shows a consistent longitudinal pattern of incidents over the years. The pattern does not change – either for the abuse incidents reported before 2002, or the abuse incidents reported in each year from 2002 to 2007.

In presenting the data, Smith stressed the following points:
The incidence of abuse of youth in the Catholic Church between 1950 and 2002 is consistent with the pattern of social change in the USA.

The study of the rate of change in incidence shows that it is consistent with that of other behavioral indicators and overall social forces (ideas, attitudes, trends, media images, etc) prevalent in this period of vast change in the U.S. The study data from surveys and archival sources illustrates how those social forces were represented in seminaries, parishes, treatment facilities and in the lives of individual priests.

Concerning the Causes & Context research now in progress, Smith described the need to understand the community or parish context of the abuse and the circumstances in which it took place, including such questions as:

• How was the abuse initiated and able to persist?
• What were the specific time-linked factors of parish life?
• Were concerns expressed in Catholic parishes during this period 1970 – 1985?

The focus of the research on community or parishes is on the “context” and historical explanation of abuse, not on the impact of victimization. The research includes surveys of identified adult survivors of abuse by priests and of adult Catholics active in parish life in the 1970s – 1980s, covering memories of abuse / knowledge of abuse, circumstances of initiation, knowledge by other adults, and disclosure and response.

At the conclusion of her presentation, Professor Smith distributed questionnaires to audience members, and invited everyone to respond to the questions about parish life in the 1970s – 1980s. The research team intends to distribute a version of the questionnaire broadly in Catholic communities as they work to understand the personal life situation of the victims and the situational contexts of initiation. Once a final questionnaire becomes available, Voice of the Faithful will distribute it to the national membership.

A spirited discussion sprang up during the Q&A session, as many survivors in attendance questioned the validity of data provided by U.S. dioceses. Professor Smith responded to their concerns by noting that while the data set made available by the U.S. bishops was self-reported, it was the only public data available from any source. Fr. Tom Doyle weighed in on the same issue in the days following the meeting by circulating via email extended reflections on the benefits and limitations of the Causes & Context study.

Background on the Causes & Context Research Project

In June of 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) created a Charter that aimed to understand and address the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States. Article 9 of the Charter states in part: “To understand the problem more fully and to enhance the effectiveness of our future response, the National Review Board will also commission a descriptive study, with the full cooperation of our dioceses/eparchies, of the nature and scope of the problem within the Catholic Church in the United States, including such data as statistics on perpetrators and victims.” The Office of Child and Youth Protection and the National Review Board, two entities formed as a result of the Charter, commissioned researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice to conduct the first descriptive study, covering the period 1950-2002. The John Jay College Research Team – criminologists, forensic psychologists, research consultants and research assistants – released a full report on the nature and scope of the sexual abuse crisis in February 2004.

In the two years that followed, the research team did further analysis, and a supplementary report was released in 2006. Although the original study was almost entirely descriptive, the aim of the supplementary analysis was to address key issues in more detail, including the estimation of the overall problem of abuse in the Church, patterns of abuse, duration of abusive behavior, priests with one allegation and priests with multiple allegations, subgroups of priests with allegations of abuse, and the institutional response to the abuse problem.

The USCCB has also commissioned John Jay College researchers to conduct the second study noted in the Charter, an in-depth account of the causes and context of the abuse crisis. The bishops provided $1 million for that research, and that sum has been more than matched by private donations and grants from foundations and federal agencies. Work on the “Causes & Context” Study is ongoing and should be complete in 2010.