The Dark Side of Teachers

It's a silent scandal. It's claimed 10% of school-age children. It shows little sign of abaiting. No one will talk about it. Except Faithful Catholic Professionals, right here. He speaks of a horrow Catholics know only too well: the sexual abuse of young people by those in authority. He's not talking about Catholic priests molesting young boys, however. He's talking about teachers sexually abusing their students.

He cites the work of Jon E. Dougherty of Newsmax, from his Monday, Apr. 05, 2004 column. Observe:

Now, on the heels of the Catholic abuse scandal comes another of historic proportions—one that has the potential to be much greater and far-reaching. According to a draft report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, in compliance with the 2002 "No Child Left Behind" act signed into law by President Bush, between 6 percent and 10 percent of public school children across the country have been sexually abused or harassed by school employees and teachers.

Charol Shakeshaft, the Hofstra University scholar who prepared the report, said the number of abuse cases—which range from unwanted sexual comments to rape—could be much higher.

"So we think the Catholic Church has a problem?" she told industry newspaper Education Week in a March 10 interview.

Apparently, the MSM thought so. They yawned as the evidence of predatory teachers came up:

What is also different about the school cases is the level of secondary media coverage it has—or, in this case, hasn't—received.

Yet, media coverage of the Catholic priest abuse scandal was nearly wall-to-wall; every major television news program, every major newspaper and wire service, and most mass market magazines covered the scandal relentlessly.

But, reports the National Catholic Register, a leading faith publication, "a search on the media database LexisNexis for "Charol Shakeshaft" turned up no articles eight days after" the Education Week report.

An online search by NewsMax.com found similar disinterest. Google.com's news database, for example, returned just four entries for "Charol Shakeshaft;" two were Catholic publications.

The Indianapolis Star and Christian Science Monitor only briefly mentioned Shakeshaft's data; the later publication couched her remarks about schools in an article primarily rehashing the Catholic church abuse scandal.

Yahoo.com's news search engine returned only three; two were similar stories from the Indianapolis Star.

One time in 1997, a collegue of mine (at another City high school in which I had worked) and I heard about a woman that had been dismissed from the then Board of Education. Her crime? Proselytizing in the classroom. This collegue remarked, "If this woman was alleged to have abused children, she'd sit in a desk for months waiting for her hearing. But since she dared talk about God in her classroom, they throw her out immediately. The Board has their priorities so screwed up!"

Unfortunately, nothing much has changed.

What most don't understand is that the enemies of the Catholic Church have often accused it of hypocracy. What else could such Reasonable people call a collection of Fools that stood in the way of the One Thing that Matters way too often? Many of the MSM counted themselves among these Reasonable people. Thus, when the scandal broke, it proved irresistable. Plus, the scheer horror of Catholic Priests abusing young children and Catholic Bishops covering up for them and moving them along truly scandalized Catholics and Non-Catholics alike. Priests and Bishops were closely identified with Christ; right or not, many Catholics saw Christ when they saw the Priest that married their daughters and baptized their granddaughters. Many children had been raised by their trusting and Faithful Catholic parents to revere priests and bishops. Thus, such reprehensible behavior shatters their trust.It was a major story. Teachers, on the other hand, never held such an office of sacred responsibilty. They have never been closely identified with Christ as a profession. While still utterly depraved, Teacher sexual abuse does not carry the added fundemental spiritual betrayal that occurs when the perpertrator is of the clergy.

HOWEVER, the numbers speak for themselves. Teachers' sexual abuse has shattered the lives of at least 290,000 children in ten years. Five decades of Catholic Priests' sexual abuse has destroyed 4,000 lives. These numbers can't be ignored. It is singularly inappropriate to play numbers games with children's well-being. However, it's unconscionable to observe these differences--and not demand from the media the reasons that they ignore this.

These children deserve better from all adults. May they get it. Soon.