First the nuns were sexually abused, and now they are suffering media abuse. The Post Dispatch ran a hatchet job about a survey that examined sexual victimization among Catholic nuns. Why do I say a hatchet job? Let me count the ways.

I believe that it’s terrible that any woman, or man, is sexually victimized – even one. But we need an accurate accounting if we want to understand the problem. The article claims that 40% of nuns have been victimized by priests or other nuns. How does it reach that figure? The survey asked the nuns if they had been victims of (1) childhood sex abuse (18.6%), (2) sexual exploitation (12.5%), or (3) sexual harassment (9.3%), and then lumps all three together. So the maximum number would be 40%; but since only 10% of the childhood sex abuse, less than 75% of the sexual exploitation (which includes consensual sex), and less than half of the sexual harassment took place at the hands of nuns, priests, or other religious person (whatever that is), the figure drops to 15.9% — which is still 15.9% too large, but at least that’s a more accurate number – and less than half of what is claimed. Clearly the article is trying to maximize the number and put it at the feet of the Catholic church. The correct headline should be that 40% of nuns who have been sexually victimized were victimized by anyone in the church – not that 40% of all nuns have been victimized by people in the church. 

According to the article, the Catholic church discovered in 1996 that nuns had been sexually victimized, and despite running the results of the survey in a couple of religious research journals, buried it by not putting out a press release. This tells us that reporters look to press releases for stories, and not religious journals. I knew this already because I’ve discovered via the internet that stories, even at papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post, are often nothing more than lightly reformatted press releases with one or two outside experts comments added. What a clever way to hide something – put it in plain sight. What a novel concept – unless you actually notify the press, you’re hiding something.

The final problem with the story as run in the Post is that there were no comparison of victimization rate to any other group, like women in general. The article gives us no idea whether you’re more likely to be a victim of sexual “trauma” as a nun than as a woman in general. The article give us no idea if nuns are more likely to be sexually harassed in houses of worship than women in places of work. The Toronto star throws out the figure that 20 to 27 percent of all women have been sexually abused as children (a figure that quite frankly is alarmingly high) — which indicates that nuns are on the low side — but no word on sexual exploitation or sexual harassment. Its just one big scare story designed to cash in on the sex molesting priest scandal. Its important – does the Catholic church need to clean up its act, or does all of society?

I can’t speak for the study itself, but the Post ran a letter from Janet Lauritsen, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice who ripped the methodology of the study – only certain orders participated, less than half of those in the order responded and concluded that it was unrepresentative and that no estimate of victimization could be drawn.

No doubt this story will get plenty of play, even though its biased, misleading, and provides no context. But then, every media consumer is used to that kind of reporting.

UPDATE:

Today the paper ran a letter from one of the original researchers of the study refuting the claims of poor methodology and labeling the other academics claims “fatuous”. Oooh, academic catfight. Is a 50% non-response rate significant? Beats me. But this letter says the post left off two categories of sexual victimization included in the study: intra-community sexual harassment and other sexual abuse (including rape and sexual assault). So I still think the Post has done a lousy, sensationalist job of covering the survey.

Tags: nuns, sexual abuse