December 2-8, 2007 Issue |
Posted 11/27/07 at 3:03 PM
NEW YORK — When the Associated Press set out to investigate
an apparent problem with sexual assault of children in public schools, the
organization spared no expense.
A congressionally mandated study by Hofstra University had
already found school-based sexual abuse to be a big problem.
“It was one of our priorities for the year,” said John
Affleck, editor of the AP’s national reporting team.
The result was a three-part series, available to editors
throughout the country beginning Oct. 20, that revealed widespread and routine
sexual assault of public school students throughout the country.
The first story summarized: “Students in America’s schools
are groped. They’re raped. They’re pursued, seduced and think they’re in love.”
The series told of an entrenched resistance to stopping
abusers on the part of teachers, administrators and the National Education
Association, a teacher’s union.
So why apparently have only a handful of newspapers
nationwide run the series — in stark contrast to the avalanche of press
received by the Catholic Church since 2002?
Paul Colford, corporate communications director for the AP,
said he was inundated with complaints from people wondering why their
newspapers were not carrying the series.
The AP’s investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five
years in which educators were punished for actions “from bizarre to sadistic.”
It said that on any given day, three educators are actively “hitting on”
students, thus speaking to “a much larger problem in a system that is stacked
against victims.”
It quoted a California lawyer who has spent 30 years
investigating school abuse, saying that every school district in the country
likely hosts at least one sex abuser.
By contrast, the series pointed out, over a 52-year period,
some 4,400 priests were “accused” of molestation.
“I received inquiries from readers who were frustrated,”
Colford said. “They had heard about the story and couldn’t find it in some
cases. In other instances, their local paper had carried one part of the
series, but not the rest of it.”
Colford said most who complained about an inability to find
the stories were academics, psychologists, lawyers, social workers and
professional researchers. Colford said AP officials have no accurate process
for determining which newspapers ran part or all of the series, short of
embarking on a research project.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue complained in early
November that the AP’s member newspapers were ignoring the story, even though
they routinely run stories about decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by
priests. He conducted a search of Nexis, a central database for newspapers to
archive articles. Two weeks after the series was released, Donohue found, the
search indicated that only five newspapers carried the entire series.
“A Nexis search is a very poor indicator of how many papers
have published a story,” Colford said, explaining that publications have
different timelines and processes for filing their stories, and some never file
wire copy.
Affleck, who is defensive of his team’s series, said he was
confident it received satisfactory play in the nation’s press. He had no data
to back the claim, but shuffled through clippings of the story in an effort to
show the Register that newspapers have published it.
He said his own research revealed that the series had been
promoted with a teaser in 90 newspapers on the day it was released.
By contrast, newspapers throughout the country — nearly all
of them — obsessed over the Boston Globe “Spotlight” stories, carried by AP,
about sexual abuse by priests in one diocese that mishandled the reports.
Martin Nussbaum, a Colorado Springs-based attorney who has
represented Boston and other dioceses in sex abuse-related cases, conducted
research of stories regarding old allegations of sex abuse in the Church.
“The Boston Globe began publishing on Jan. 6, 2002, a series
of reports regarding sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of
Boston,” Nussbaum wrote “In a flash, newspapers around the country began
reprinting the Globe’s reports and developing their own. They published 728
stories in January; 1,095 in February, and 2,961 in March. By April, these
papers were publishing a new story every nine minutes, 160 every day, 4,791 for
the month. By year-end, American papers provided their readers over 21,000
stories of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.”
Boston Globe editors contacted by the Register claimed only
vague knowledge of the AP series, and could not answer as to whether part of it
ran in their paper.
“I think we may have handled pieces of it, but I’m really
not sure,” said Jim Smith, the Globe’s political editor. “I’ll look into it.”
A library employee, who would identify himself only as
“Mark,” agreed to search a database of Globe content. He said he’d be surprised
to find the AP’s report.
“We don’t run much wire copy,” Mark said. “We would likely
do our own story.”
On Nov. 15, more than three weeks after the AP’s series
became available, Mark found only one story containing the phrase “sexual
abuse.” But the story had nothing to do with the public school system. Rather,
the story — wire copy originating at the Los Angeles Times — was about sexual
assault in the Catholic Church.
The story told how “multimillion dollar financial
settlements reached with victims of priest sexual abuse have created new
financial stresses for Catholic schools.”
Patrick Chappell, a 19-year-old freshman at Loyola
University in Chicago, was molested as a high school student by the former
president of the Estes Park, Colo., school district. His family fled the town
and enrolled him in a Catholic school when public school teachers and a coach
showed open hostility toward the family for turning in the abuser. The
perpetrator, while free on bond, was forbidden from being near minors.
“I remember there was this reception in the school for one
of his friends, and he showed up,” Chappell said. “There were minors all over
the place, and he was there despite the court order that said to stay away from
kids. Everyone knew who he was. He was Mr. Estes Park, a pillar of the
community.”
After taking refuge at a Catholic school in suburban
Boulder, Chappell began speaking to children at public schools in Denver.
“I spoke to raise awareness about this problem, because if I
had been told about it this wouldn’t have happened to me,” Chappell said.
“Never did I speak that a child didn’t come out to me or a guidance counselor
as a victim of rape. Not once. In my opinion, the media have a great potential
to make parents and children aware of this threat. They should take it. Most
children who are raped are not raped by priests.”
Howard Kurtz, a Washington Post writer who’s among the
best-known media critics in the country, declined to speak with the Register
about the media’s seemingly disparate treatment of sex assault in public
schools, as compared to Catholic institutions.
Kurtz wrote in an e-mail: “I’m afraid I’m just not up on the
subject. Sorry.”
Wayne Laugesen is based in
Boulder, Colorado.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Make a Donation now!
Insightful. Informative. Uncompromisingly faithful. The National Catholic Register is more than a newspaper. It’s a cause. Your support for the Register funds important journalism that helps to build a Culture of Life in our nation, and throughout the world. Help us promote the Church’s New Evangelization by donating to the National Catholic Register right now.
.
