Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Will the Post Dispatch do a followup report as suggested here?

Why does the Post-Dispatch continue to bash the Catholic church and dredge up old news for its front page? Due to your comprehensive reporting, the readers should be more than fully informed about the Catholic church priest sex abuse problem.

Facts that may not be reported are:

On Feb. 27, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York issued a comprehensive accounting of abuse in the Catholic church. The report found that 4,392 priests allegedly abused minors between 1950 and 2002. That amounts to 4 percent of priests who served during that time period.

A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Law found that between 6 percent and 10 percent of public school children across the country have been sexually abused or harassed by school employees and teachers. The report, issued this March, is very disturbing and more worthy than the back-page attention it received.

Can one hope that a follow-up article will focus on sexual abuse in other religions and in our public school system? The tragedy of sexual abuse is not just a Catholic problem that will go away once the guilty priests are punished.

Christine Mejia
Rock Hill
I suspect that this Letter to the Editor will be the extent of the Post's reporting because, it seems, facts tend to get in the way when it comes to reports on the Catholic Church.

Source.

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