A wider circle of clergy abuse

The spotlight in the Catholic clergy-abuse crisis has fallen on high-profile allegations involving the abuse of boys, but the scandal is spreading to another, less publicized, side of the story: priests' sexual involvement with girls and women.

As US bishops meet here this week to develop a national policy to protect children, new developments highlight the scandal's broader scope.

• Auxiliary Bishop James F. McCarthy, a former adviser to New York Cardinal John O'Connor, resigned Tuesday after admitting to several affairs with women.

• A panel of victim advocates meeting here today alongside the US Conference of Catholic Bishops will discuss sexual exploitation of girls and women by clergy. They say publicity over the unfolding scandal is emboldening hundreds more female victims to come forward.

• A Roman Catholic priest in Santa Rosa, Calif., Don Kimball, was sentenced last Friday to seven years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old girl in a church rectory two decades ago.

Studies by scholars and anecdotal evidence from therapists show that sexual involvement of priests with women – which includes the exploitation of vulnerable females who go to priests for counseling, as well as consensual relationships – is far more prevalent than sexual activity with minors.

This, say experts, demonstrates that the challenge confronting the church is a broader failure to practice celibacy, not only a problem of homosexuality and pedophilia.

"Priests should not be having sex with anybody under the rule of celibacy – it's a sin against church teaching and [if in the course of counseling] a violation of professional ethics," says Thomas Reese, editor of America, a Catholic weekly. Laws against sexual exploitation in counseling include clergy in 17 states.

"Priests who victimize women are far more common than those who victimize boys," says Gary Schoener, a Minnesota psychotherapist who has worked with 2,500 sex-abuse cases involving clergy of many denominations.

As to whether the church faces a wider problem in the practice of celibacy, William Ryan, USCCB spokesman, says, "I don't know if we know enough to say it's a problem – I'm confident the overwhelming majority of priests are faithful to their vows."

For girls and women, the challenge of coming forward is heightened by the inclination of the church and society to blame females for abuse. "Church officials historically have been much quicker to blame girls than boys. When women come forward the response has been, 'Well, what did you do to seduce them?' " says Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota attorney specializing in clergy abuse cases who in just the past two months of scandal revelations has been contacted by 50 females alleging abuse by priests. "Somehow there is greater cultural acceptance of that notion, and that cultural bias gets magnified by the sexism and paternalism of the clerical culture."

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