Catholic Family Vignettes

Leticia from Causa Nostrae Laetitiae provides the shocking details from The Hofstra Report: Sexual Abuse by Educators Is Scrutinized

Here are a few excerpts from the report:

A draft report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education concludes that far too little is known about the prevalence of sexual misconduct by teachers or other school employees, but estimates that millions of children are being affected by it during their school-age years.

and:

That study found that from 1950 to 2002, 10,667 people made allegations that priests or deacons had sexually abused them as minors. ("Report Tallies Alleged Sexual Abuse by Priests," this issue.) Extrapolating from data collected in a national survey for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000, Ms. Shakeshaft estimated that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee from 1991 to 2000—a single decade, compared with the roughly five-decade period examined in the study of Catholic priests. Those figures suggest that "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests,"contended Ms. Shakeshaft, who is a professor of educational administration at Hofstra, in Hempstead, N.Y.

"Based on the assumption that the AAUW surveys accurately represent the experiences of all K-12 students, more than 4.5 million students are sexually harassed or abused by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade," the report says. "This is about the same number of people who live in all of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming."

Please read the rest of this startling report here.

Last evening, my husband met a lovely mother of five who had recently stopped homeschooling her children so that the older child could have the opportunity to participate in public school sports programs and other extra-curricular activities. He encouraged her to reconsider her actions, before school begins. She seemed disturbed by some of the information that he shared with her regarding our journey - having left homeschooling for public school, only to return, chastened by our experience. But here lies the seduction for most home educators...that even if we feel we are providing an excellent education, religious instruction and loving fellowship with our children - they are still "missing" something. Well, folks, here's one more thing that you definitely WANT your children to miss.


May God bless and comfort all of the dear children and families who have been exposed to this abuse. May God strengthen the resolve of all families who are seeking to protect and educate their children in the best way they can.