Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.
“[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?” she said. “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
So, in order to better protect children, did media outlets start hounding the worse menace of the school systems, with headlines about a “Nationwide Teacher Molestation Cover-up” and by asking “Are Ed Schools Producing Pedophiles?”
No, they didn’t. That treatment was reserved for the Catholic Church, while the greater problem in the schools was ignored altogether.
...
Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government’s discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools.
...
The media have left many with the impression that sexual abuse is a Catholic problem — as if Catholic beliefs and customs make sex abuse inevitable. Church teaching for its part is clear: Sexual abuse of minors is always wrong. A more likely culprit would be a non-religious ambivalence about the pedophilia, as seen, for instance, in the media’s refusal to broaden its scope to include teachers when considering the issue.
I have another suggestion as to why many people think pedophilia is acceptable.
Consider that there is sexual images and innuendos in all kinds of places.
And no one seems to care.
Like they don't expect literate children to read Cosmo magazine's porno headlines at the check out line.
There's no line in the sand between sex and children in our culture.
Talk about sex! Give them all the details! No boundaries! Let them see what goes on!
Sex scenes on t.v. during prime time? No big deal. If kids happen to surf on the channel, so what?
If we truly want to stop pedophilia, the rule should be this: if a kid can see a sexual image, it's verboten.
On t.v. In the news. In advertising. On the internet, etc.
If kids can see it, there should be no sexual image, no nudity, no suggestiveness, no innuendo, nothing.
You're saying: but you're being such a prude.
Am I? When we make it okay for kids to see sex, it's not such a stretch to allow for kids to have sex.
There should be a wall of separation between kids and sex in our public culture.
What separating kids from sex does is send a message to our culture that kids and sex don't mix. In the cultural world, people like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen get away with sexual abominations, because in their worlds, sexual "rigidity" is taboo.
Well there's where a a lack of strictness gets you.
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