For Experts on Abuse, Priests' Orientation Isn't the Issue
By Sandra G. Boodman, Washington Post Staff Writer
Originally published in The Washington Post, June 24, 2002
Behavioral scientists are virtually unanimous in their emphatic rejection of a linkage between homosexuality and child sexual abuse by priests or any other group.
"The only reason this is even a question is that this is a homophobic society," said Robert Prentky, a forensic psychologist who has spent two decades studying sexual predators at the Massachusetts Treatment Center inside the state prison at Bridgewater.
"Most men who molest boys are disgusted at the thought of having sex with adult males," said William Samek, a Miami psychologist who treats sex offenders and their victims. "Sometimes they choose boys because they are less frightened of them or because they feel a connection with them."
Although some pedophiles are gay, most sex crimes against minors are committed by heterosexual married men. Behavioral scientists say gay men are no more likely to seek out young boys for sex than heterosexual men are to seek out underage girls.
But an estimated 80 percent of known victims of priests are male, a reversal of the pattern in secular society, where the vast majority of child victims of sexual abuse are girls.
The prevalence of boy victims may be partly situational, a reflection of the all-male culture of the priesthood and priests' unfettered access to boys as coaches, teachers, youth group leaders and spiritual mentors. Another factor may be the large number of priests who are gay—estimates range from 30 percent to 50 percent, a rate far higher than the 8 percent to 10 percent in the general population. That means that many priests who molest boys are gay, as are many priests who don't.
Some abusive heterosexual priests have told therapists they picked boys in the twisted belief that it would not break their vow of celibacy and threaten their vocation. These priests were often raised in repressive homes where they were warned to stay away from girls and told that sexual feelings involving women were evil.
"It sounds unbelievable, but this specific rationalization is often used by some priests who in their minds were not really having sex" because a boy could not get pregnant or be a marriage partner, said Leslie M. Lothstein, director of psychology at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., where many priests have been sent for treatment. Priests who recognize that sex with boys is wrong have said, "I can confess this sin, be forgiven and start my life all over again," Lothstein wrote in 1990.
Curtis M. Bryant, a psychologist and Jesuit priest, said that although most of the 400 abusive priests he has treated are gay, he has also worked with a "significant number" of straight priests who molested "sexually confused, highly feminine" adolescent boys.
Although it's impossible to know how many pedophiles are gay, studies have found that sexual predators who exclusively target boys have more victims—one study found an average of 150—and are more likely to relapse after treatment than those who target girls.
Barbara Blaine, a Chicago lawyer and social worker who is founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said she believes that boys are most often victims because "priests had more access to them."
"Access is really key," added Blaine, noting that molestation is often a crime of opportunity. Until recently, a priest taking boys camping or on a weekend retreat would not have aroused parental suspicion as it would have with girls.
Psychotherapist Peter Isely, who was molested at 13 by a priest at a high school seminary in Wisconsin, said that clergy were regarded as ideal role models by his mother, a single parent who was raising eight children, most of them boys. Other victims, many of whom grew up in single-parent families riven by divorce, poverty, neglect or physical abuse, say that their mothers were especially delighted when a priest paid them special attention and sometimes pushed their children toward their abusers without knowing what was happening.
But the large number of cases involving boys doesn't obscure the fact that girls have been victims, too, although they may be more reluctant to come forward, fearing they will be blamed.
David Clohessy, executive director of the survivors group, noted that about half of the group's 4,000 members are women, some of whom bore children fathered by priests. And some clergymen, including former Massachusetts priest James Porter, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence at Bridgewater, were found to have had more than 200 victims of both sexes.
"Male victims get more attention because it's more salacious and a higher number of them tend to file lawsuits or criminal charges against their abusers," Clohessy said. "Nobody thinks it's automatically the boy's fault. For one thing, a 13-year-old boy isn't asked, 'What were you wearing when this happened?'"
