Unlike Clerical Abuse, Media Downplays Sexual Abuse in the Public Schools

The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts news release…

The newspaper of Boston’s African American community, The Bay State Banneris reporting that students in the Boston Public Schools experienced 744 incidents of sexual assault in the 2021-2022 school year.

According to the BPS, this figure includes not only sexual violence, but sexual harassment and student on student sexual misconduct.

Increased incidences of physical violence and sexual assault in the public schools are fueling demands by Boston City Councilors to return police officers to the schools.

In comparison, a July, 2003 report by the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts revealed that there were, at least, 789 documented complaints of sexual abuse against priests of the Archdiocese of Boston over a forty year period from 1940 to 2000.

If taken at face value, these figures would indicate that the ratio of sexual abuse in the Boston Public Schools versus that in the Archdiocese of Boston is, approximately, 40 to 1. Moreover, the numbers in the former represent one city, while the latter is comprised of five counties.

The Catholic Action League called the revelations “shocking and astonishing, made all the more so by the absence of a moral panic in the Boston media.”

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “The molestation of minors by homosexual priests was an abominable crime. The anemically inadequate response by those in authority in the Church was a scandal, an injustice, a betrayal, and a gross dereliction of duty.”

“The Church ought to be held to a higher standard than secular society. Nonetheless, the current revelations underscore the brazen double standard and the audacious hypocrisy of Boston’s media and political elites.”

“When it comes to sexual abuse in the public schools, there are no front page headlines, demands for resignations, or calls for prosecutions and government investigations. There is no daily drum beat of articles, editorials, columns, and op-ed pieces. There are no lead stories in television news coverage or drive time discussions on talk radio.”

The Boston Globe actually downplayed the story, suggesting that the numbers were ‘murky.’

“No one should believe that the media campaign against the Catholic Church twenty years ago was motivated by a desire to protect children. The Globe believes that 64 million dead children from abortion aren’t enough.”

“For the Globe and the rest of the Boston media, coverage of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church always had just one purpose—discrediting, neutralizing and destroying the public influence of an institution they regarded as a political, cultural and ideological enemy. Minimal Boston media attention to appalling figures of sexual abuse in the public schools confirms that reality, once again.”