Child abuse by teacher

One of the great myths pedaled in Ireland is that as soon as the Church is out of education we'll be rid of the scourge of child abusing teachers.

Yesterday a teacher in my hometown pleaded guilty to molesting 8 of his first grade students. A quick perusal of sites like Teacher Smack Down and Teachers and Trash Education demonstrates that child abuse goes on in public as well as Catholic schools.

Comparing the incidence of sexual misconduct in schools with the Catholic Church scandal, [Hofstra Professor Carol] Shakeshaft notes that a recent study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.

In contrast, she extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.

The figures suggest "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests," said Shakeshaft, according to Education Week.

I doubt the situation is any different anywhere. I would bet it's true in Ireland, but incidences of non-clerical abuse don't attract anything like the publicity that those abuses by priests and religious do. This is partly because the media loves bashing the Church and partly because for many in the media and Irish society as a whole abuse by priests is somehow more shocking than by teachers or anyone else.

However, that doesn't alter the fact that there are parents out there who seem to believe that their children are safer in secular schools than in Catholic schools, which I doubt has any basis in fact. For this I blame the myth-makers, in the media and in politics.