From the Washington Post:
The Crusading Bloggers Exposing Abuse in Protestant Churches.
Based on our experience in the UK, I really really think that it's a big mistake to behave as if the sexual abuse of minors by adults in positions of trust and authority is unique to the Roman Catholic church. It's not -- it's an issue with priests and ministers from all denominations, as well as with teachers, sports coaches and leaders of youth groups.
The only thing I can think of that's peculiar to the Catholic Church is that unlike most abusers we see in the British courts, celibate priests don't have their own children to abuse, and not that much access to those of close friends and family members (who will frequently live some distance away, or even in another country), so children in their own congregation are the natural targets of opportunity.
If they'd have gone into teaching, or become youth workers, or even joined the priesthood of another denomination or another religion, they'd still have been abusing children, just different ones. Or they'd be abusing their own children or their children's friends, or looking for victims online.
Maybe I'm being oversensitive about this, and certainly I'm not at all familiar with the US background, but something tells me that pedophiles and sexual predators are probably much the same in most countries, and certainly as a former Catholic with an interest in history and politics I'm very aware of how the perverse sexual behaviour of supposedly celibate priests and nuns was a commonplace of hateful anti-immigrant (Irish, Italian, Polish, Mexican) propaganda in both the US and the UK until comparatively recently.
It's easily forgotten, I think, that for a long time Catholics held a place in both British and US anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner demonology that is now occupied for many people by Muslims. It's within living memory, after all, that the prospect of a Catholic president was as horrifying to many Americans as would still, at least to some sections of the public, be the prospect of a Jewish, Muslim or atheist president.
Plus, of course, if you're a lawyer specialising in representing victims of sexual abuse on a contingency fee basis (no-win, no-fee) , Roman Catholic archdioceses have deeper pockets and are more obvious targets of opportunity than most independent, unaffiliated, baptist and other non-episcopal religious groups and communities.
