Comment by cowanon22 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cowanon22 | Hacker News Reader

First off, I'm not doubting that abuse occurred and it is terrible for the victims involved.

What sampling method did they use to arrive at this estimate? What is the error range and 95/99% confidence intervals? I haven't been able to find the original report online.

From some articles: The commission found evidence of 2,900 to 3,200 abusers – out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics – but said this was probably an underestimation.

We would really need to see what the method they used to arrive at the numbers - this smells like major hyperbole.

UPDATE: a better article is available in French: https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/les-cinq-chiffres-c...

The number they gave is cases over 70 years, which is a weird way of reporting it. Annually, it is about 2900-3000 priests per year. The article also mention that the current rate in about 1/4 of the rate in the 1970's, showing that some of the church reforms have actually worked. If you compare the French stats to what is being reported here, the anti-church media bias is flagrantly clear.

I suspect it is one of those cases where accurate numbers are literally impossible to create. Many people will want to erase this from their memories and won't say a word. Some may have genuinely done that and have no recollection of being a victim. Then I'm sure you'll also find people making accusations up.

Also if the bar to clear is 'evidence' of abuse, then this is yet another distortion of the estimate. Most abuse will surely smoulder without a shred of evidence, other than possibly the victim's testimony years later.

My conclusion as a Catholic is that the Church's hierarchy is just desperately flawed, at best a mix of non-negligible proportion of monsters and of conformists unwilling to tackle the evil, despite full awareness of it. At worst, well... Arguing about numbers when it's clear the Church has been harbouring sexual predators in huge numbers for decades is inappropriate, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not doubting major abuse occurred, and the church needs major reforms. But we should hold the numbers up to the same standard that we hold all other numbers to. There should be a detailed description of the sampling and data, a detailed description or the model used for the projection, and a detailed description and justification for any bias adjustments. Any results should have an error band. Otherwise, this is likely published with an agenda, not to find the truth.

I sort of agree, estimates ought to be specific. My point is that unless these numbers are off by many orders of magnitude, they already represent failure beyond even the most lenient assumptions of incompetence.

I used to think, well, someone accuses a priest, who knows maybe that's right or not, churches err on the side of innocence without proper evidence, and the rare monsters slip through the net. With more light being shed on this in Poland, I now believe this is not the case. There were now dozens of cases where each individual one ought to bring prosecutions on the ground of organised criminal organisation exploiting children (or at least organised cover-up), with the CC's top hierarchs held responsible. Each individual one, never mind the dozens that made it to the news.

So whether it's really 216,000 children abused, or even just 1% of that, I think this is catastrophic. Unless these numbers are inflated by a factor of 100,000, I'll stick to my opinion.

I don't disagree with you - the church has major problems some of which still need correction. But there is a clear media bias in the US - compare the American articles to a much more details one in French (Google Translate works well) https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/les-cinq-chiffres-c...

Reforms? What about completely shutting the whole thing down. What other institution out there would be able to be responsible for such an unbelievable level of abuse and not get prosecuted/sued into oblivion?

Should we also shut down schools, scouting programs, day cares, adoption, camping, etc? All of these have had almost exactly the same size and scope of scandal.

Really? Which camps or day cares have sexually abused hundreds of thousands of kids?

No. It's an insult to the victims to attempt statistical whataboutery.

The record is clear and damning. A decimal point or two on the percentages doesn't change the facts.

Even one story like this is one story too many. And the number of stories like these is much greater than one.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/school-of-s...

This isn't "statistical whataboutery", it is basic ethical reporting. The French media got it mostly right; The US media got it mostly wrong.

We must have a zero tolerance policy for abuse, but bad reporting and bad extrapolation serve no one.

5.6% is the estimated historical incidence rate for pedophile priests in the US. 7% of Australian priests have face accusation - so incidence would be a little lower. The pope was reported as saying 2% - but the interview in which this happened was walked back by the Vatican. 2-3% would be on the low end. I'm surprised that you would consider this hyperbole after the endless revelations over the last two decades.

again, estimated by whom, and how?

Well this is a roundup of a bunch of sources:

https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2021/03/are-catholic-c...

> the anti-church media bias is flagrantly clear.

Most articles I have read today on that topic (in the French media) were talking about an “historic moment” and praising the church for recognizing the problem, admitting failure and starting such a study. Far from anti-church speech…

I'm referring to the US media - they covered it very differently from the French media.

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