Bishop Scicluna, currently archbishop of Valletta, is now something of a hero to survivors of
sex abuse for having finally understood the dynamic of the
clerical abuse scandal and vigorously prosecuted priests who raped and molested
children.
What The New York Times calls the «blame Woodstock» explanation for the rise of
clerical sex abuse cases in the Seventies, despite the paper's evident scepticism, can not be entirely discounted, since as the researchers of the John Jay College (hereafter JJC) pointed out in their latest report, «the sexual
abuse of minors is a pervasive problem in society and in organisations that involve close relationships between youth and adults... No exact measure exists for the number of youths who have contact with priests in the Catholic Church in a year... [but] despite the media focus on
child sexual
abuse by Catholic priests, it is clear that these
abuse acts are a small percentage of all
child sexual
abuse incidents in the United States.»