40% of nuns victims, survey says
Bill Smith
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Jan. 5, 2003 12:00 AM
ST. LOUIS - A national survey, completed in 1996 but intentionally never publicized, estimates that a "minimum" of 34,000 Roman Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.
Some of that sexual abuse, exploitation or harassment has come at the hands of priests and other nuns in the church, the report said.
Although the issue was never specifically addressed, the survey indicated that nearly half of all nuns had been involved in some sort of consensual sex during their religious lives, often with other nuns or priests.
The survey was conducted by researchers at St. Louis University and was paid for by several orders of Catholic nuns.
The survey is the only national scientific study dealing with the sexual victimization of nuns in the Catholic Church, according to its researchers.
Findings of the study were published in two religious research journals in spring and winter 1998 but have never been reported by the mainstream press.
John Chibnall, a research psychologist and co-author of the study, said researchers agreed not to prepare a press release about the findings because a national women's Catholic group, Leadership Conference of Women Religious, believed the information would be sensationalized.
The St. Louis study is the result of a 15-page survey returned by 1,164 nuns representing 123 religious orders throughout the United States.
The survey dealt with three types of victimization.
The first, child sexual abuse, was defined as any sexually oriented contact with a person of the same or opposite sex where the target is younger than age 18.
The second, sexual exploitation, was defined as any sexual advance, request for sexual favors, or other verbal or non-verbal sexual conduct that takes place when a woman entrusts her property, body, mind or spirit to another person acting in a professional role.
The third, sexual harassment, was defined as any unwelcome sexual advance that affects employment decisions, interferes with work, or creates a hostile or intimidating work environment.
In their report, the researchers noted that they believe the figures are more likely to underestimate rather than overestimate the true prevalence of sexual victimization among sisters.
For the survey, the researchers went to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and asked for contact information for the 538 orders in the leadership group.
Of those orders, 123 agreed to take part in the survey.
From the 29,000 names provided, researchers used random sampling to pare the list to 2,500 nuns who were sent questionnaires. Of those women, 1,164 returned surveys.
Edited by - target on 5 January 2003 11:7:41