Citation

Smith ML, Rengifo AF, Vollman BK. Crim. Justice Behav. 2008; 35(5): 570-582.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0093854808314340

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The distribution of the incidents of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the United States (event structure) and the reports of these abuse events (reporting structure ) present two distinct trajectories, confounding existing individual-level research results. Data from an institutional census of records of abuse between 1950 and 2002 show a steady increase in cases through the late 1970s and early 1980s, followed by a surge in reporting in the mid-1990s and again in 2002. These patterns are stable throughout all regions of the Catholic Church in the United States. Rather than analyze the abuse or reporting from a conventionally individual, psychological framework, this research reframes the analyses for the event structure and the reporting of abuse by priests.

Language: en