The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States
School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University, AZ 85287, USA
Religions 2019, 10(4), 281; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040281
Received: 28 February 2019
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Revised: 29 March 2019
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Accepted: 10 April 2019
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Published: 20 April 2019
The paper explores similarities in patterns of abuse and in patterns of how the known abuse cases are handled by the Catholic church and the U.S. military and develops preliminary explanations of why. The paper considers how the two organizations deal with external efforts by civil authorities at oversight and prosecution, and the extent to which they invoke their sacred status authority to evade responsibility and civilian oversight. The paper finds that the handling of sex abuse in each organization has been affected partly by the institutions seeing themselves as sacred, as something apart from the secular state, beholden to alternative authorities. The paper highlights the fact that child sex abuse by religious officials and sexual assault of soldiers by fellow soldiers and officers constitute profound challenges for democracy in the US and elsewhere, as the institutions claim and may be accorded separate and privileged status, beyond the reach of democratic laws and procedures. It is a warning about the costs of public deference to other institutions. The study utilizes documentation of Catholic church clergy child sex abuse cases in the US, and documentation of sex abuse cases in the US military.
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Keywords:
clergy child sex abuse; sexual assault; military; Catholic church; sacred; institutions
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Warner, C.M. The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States. Religions 2019, 10, 281. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040281
AMA Style
Warner CM. The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States. Religions. 2019; 10(4):281. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040281
Chicago/Turabian StyleWarner, Carolyn M. 2019. "The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States" Religions 10, no. 4: 281. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040281
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