• FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    I believe it’s a little higher than general population but not by much. The sad truth is vocations with access to children have higher abuse rates (vicar, teacher, pastor, coach) because any adults with access to children have higher abuse rates. Religions authority is abused for sure, but the sad truth out of the Catholic and Anglican abuse scandals is that a fair number of abuse cases didn’t involve abuse of power. By that I mean in some cases it wasn’t an overt feature, there were cases of 14, 15 year olds acting out their attraction to older youth pastors and those people taking advantage by not saying no. That is clearly still illegal. But I only mention to illustrate that a feature of the higher abuse rates was - sadly - just the amount of contact time with children, rather than “religion” itself.

    And all that’s really just to say, although I know “paedo priest” is a well established meme, the sad truth is that any contact between adults and children had to be safeguarded whether they’re priests, drag queens, or cross dressing bishops…