Child Sexual Abuse and Religious Settings Abstract

The sexual abuse of children is a sad reality in today’s world. It can happen in many different contexts, cultures, environments, and places. However, one area where child sexual abuse was least expected to be found was in religious settings. The recent abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic Church showed that child sexual abuse is a problem that needs to be addressed with respect to the very specific context of church environments, precisely because this is a setting that fundamentally requires trust from parents yet, because of the nature of the recent abuses, requires that parents also be on guard. How to navigate this issue is addressed in this present study.

Keywords: child sexual abuse, church abuse, child sex church

Child sexual abuse is a reality in today’s world that has to be addressed by responsible authorities (Murray, Nguyen & Cohen, 2014). What is important to understand, however, is that child sexual abuse can take many forms and definitions, and to truly comprehend the scope of the problem it is necessary to be aware of these forms and definitions and how they do not correspond with existing stereotypes and/or myths pertaining to this problem (Murray et al., 2014). This is especially true when considering the problem in a religious setting, like the Catholic Church, where abuse has been an issue in the past. Parents and children need to know how to identify threats when they appear but also how to balance the problem of being on guard with the need for trust and faith, which the Church requires of its members. This is a particularly difficult problem to examine considering the sensitive nature of child sexual abuse and the history of some Church members. This study will examine the ways that this issue can be effectively navigated and prevented and show how parents and religious authorities can safely address the issue by insisting on transparency and accountability.

Literature Review

As Murray et al. (2014) show, the uncomfortable issue of child sexual abuse is one that has to be discussed in an open and effective manner in order for it to be properly addressed. Their study focuses on...

Their study is helpful for illustrating ways to cope with the problem after the fact, but the study is primarily limited to an after-the-fact perspective. Prevention is not an issue that is examined by Murray et al. (2014) and thus there is a need to understand ways that prevention can be achieved especially in settings where children may be more at risk considering recent revelations, as in the Church.
Harper and Perkins (2018) show in their study of child sexual abuse in religious institutions that understanding the psychology of reporting about abuse within institutions can help advance a better framework for dealing with the issue. The researchers examine cases in which abuse was not reported and cases where it was reported and look at the psychological underpinnings of the role players to better understand their approach to the problem. Moral foundation theory and system justification theory served as the two approaches that the researchers identified that explained stakeholder behavior with respect to whether or not sexual abuse was reported or not (Harper & Perkins, 2018). The value of the study was that it helped to show how people might look the other way when child sexual abuse signs are evident in a religious community because of their own psychological framework. The study is limited, however, in terms of identifying a practical strategy for preventing child sexual abuse. Like the study by Murray et al. (2014) it focuses primarily on after-the-fact cases.

Keenan (2013) shows that in some cases the Church has been more interested in preventing scandal or the news of scandal from being disseminated than in actually preventing sexual abuse, and, as a result, abuse can proliferate. The solution that Keenan (2013) identifies for helping stakeholders to effectively address the issue is to place more women in positions of authority. From the standpoint of situational crime theory, Keenan (2013) shows that when men are put into a position of authority over children, the situation is created in…