Sexual abuse of nuns gets little notice from church

ST. LOUIS -- A little-publicized 1996 survey of the nation's Roman Catholic nuns estimated that at least 40 percent had suffered some form of sexual trauma, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in a copyright story Sunday.

And some of the abuse, exploitation or harassment has come at the hands of priests or other nuns, according to St. Louis University researchers who conducted and reported on the survey, which was partly funded by several orders of Catholic nuns.

The researchers told the newspaper that the survey was the only national scientific study dealing with the sexual victimization of Catholic nuns.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the conference was unaware of the study and that its members have not addressed the issue.

One of the study's researchers, Ann Wolf, said she believes it is vital that the church recognize the problem.

"The bishops appear to be only looking at the issue of child sexual abuse, but the problem is bigger than that," Wolf said. "Catholic sisters are being violated -- in their ministries, at work, in pastoral counseling."

The survey data and the researchers' conclusion that at least 34,000 nuns had suffered sexual trauma were released to two specialized publications with limited readerships.

A summary of the results appeared in the May-June 1998 issue of Review for Religious, published at St. Louis University. The full results were reported in December 1998 in Review of Religious Research, an academic journal published by the Religious Research Association.

The two publications were chosen to get information to the people who needed it but "not out in front of everybody's eyes," said Paul Duckro, the St. Louis University professor who headed the survey team.

Researchers "guaranteed" religious communities "that we would not handle this in any way that sought publicity," Duckro said.

The study was the result of a 15-page survey returned by 1,164 nuns representing 123 religious orders throughout the United States.

Among the key findings, based on the survey's replies:

Nearly one in five nuns said she had been sexually abused as a child. While most of the abuse came at the hands of a male relative, about 9 percent of the cases were attributed to abuse by priests, nuns or other religious people.

One in eight nuns said she had been sexually exploited. Of those, nearly three of every four maintained she was victimized by a priest, nun or other religious person. The exploitation ranged from pressure for "dates" to requests for sexual favors to sexual intercourse.

Slightly fewer than one in 10 nuns said she was subjected to sexual harassment at least once during her religious life.

Almost half of those were reported to be at the hands of priests, nuns or other religious people.