Understanding of child sex abuse has evolved in last 50 years

Published: 2004-02-23

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the late 1960s there was so little professional literature available on people who sexually abuse minors that "you could read it all in one morning," said a longtime Canadian expert on the issue, psychologist William L. Marshall. In telephone interviews with Catholic News Service, he and other leading North American experts described a sharp learning curve on sex abuse in the United States and Canada and a few other countries around the world in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. They said most other countries haven't even entered that learning curve and still do not regard child sexual abuse as a problem or are barely beginning to address it. They described a combination of pervasive societal, legal, professional and organizational obstacles that made it far more difficult years ago to recognize child sexual abuse, report it, prevent it, arrest or treat perpetrators of abuse, or generally provide the tools to halt child sexual abuse as a major problem in society. Those facts will present an important context for Americans, and American Catholics in particular, when they try to come to grips with the data released Feb. 27 on a national study on the nature and extent of sexual abuse of minors by U.S. Catholic clergy from 1950 to 2002.

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