In the wearying continuum of news on clerical sex abuse, this present week as if the Cloyne Report wasn't enough for us to digest, Jesuit Fr. James Martin In America magazine has written this brilliant and thorough article here
which gives a full analysis of the American John Jay report on the sexual abuse crisis in the church by an expert called Mary Gail Frawley O'Dea.
It is a very important article.
On reading it myself it is clear that many of the conclusions from this report can equally be applied to other countries, including Ireland.
This is Fr. Martin's introduction to the article below :
"When the new John Jay report came out in May--lauded in some quarters and lambasted in others--I remember thinking, "I wonder what Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea thinks about it."
Frawley-O'Dea, a psychologist and author, is one of the country's leading experts on child abuse, and was the only psychologist invited to address the historic 2002 meeting of the U.S. bishops in Dallas.
Her book Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Psychoanalytic Perspective, co-authored in 1994, has become a classic text. In 2007, her book Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, was published; that same year co-edited volume, Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims: The Sexual Abuse Crisis and the Catholic Church, was also released
(Full disclosure: that last book was the result of a conference on sex abuse, in which I delivered a paper that became a chapter in her edited book.)
In short, she's as much of an expert on the topic of child sexual abuse as anyone can be.
So her comments on the John Jay Report on the "Causes and Contexts" of the crisis need to be taken seriously. She offers her analysis here at NCR."
which gives a full analysis of the American John Jay report on the sexual abuse crisis in the church by an expert called Mary Gail Frawley O'Dea.
It is a very important article.
On reading it myself it is clear that many of the conclusions from this report can equally be applied to other countries, including Ireland.
This is Fr. Martin's introduction to the article below :
"When the new John Jay report came out in May--lauded in some quarters and lambasted in others--I remember thinking, "I wonder what Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea thinks about it."
Frawley-O'Dea, a psychologist and author, is one of the country's leading experts on child abuse, and was the only psychologist invited to address the historic 2002 meeting of the U.S. bishops in Dallas.
Her book Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Psychoanalytic Perspective, co-authored in 1994, has become a classic text. In 2007, her book Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, was published; that same year co-edited volume, Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims: The Sexual Abuse Crisis and the Catholic Church, was also released
(Full disclosure: that last book was the result of a conference on sex abuse, in which I delivered a paper that became a chapter in her edited book.)
In short, she's as much of an expert on the topic of child sexual abuse as anyone can be.
So her comments on the John Jay Report on the "Causes and Contexts" of the crisis need to be taken seriously. She offers her analysis here at NCR."
