Bruce Gerencser regularly publishes a feature entitled “Black Collar Crime,” a round-up of clergy crime stories; he has just published the 6ooth story, and has a few hundred more he hasn’t linked to yet.
Sounds believable to me. Ten years ago I launched a Website named Piety, Inc. that aggregated clergy crime stories, and got so overwhelmed by the sewage that I closed it down after about 8-months. Jeri Massi focused on clergy crime in IFB churches and severely damaged her health, the Wartburg Ladies seem to me to be getting short-tempered, and Gerencser remarked once in a comment left on this site that the stories often left him feeling sick and dirty.
In consequence of which I firmly believe that, proportionally, there are far more screwed-up men standing behind the pulpit than sitting in the pews.
Anyway, he reflects on this dubious milestone:
Sixteen months ago, I posted the first story in the Black Collar Crime Series. Yesterday, I posted the six-hundredth post in the series. Focused primarily on clergy sexual misconduct, the sheer level of reports puts to rest the notion that such crimes are committed by a “few bad apples.” Numerous times a day, I receive notices from Google Alerts, notifying me that a new report of alleged clergy crime has been posted to the Internet. I look at every notification, choosing to only publish the stories that are publicly reported by reputable news sites. I am often contacted by victims who are looking to expose their abusers. I do what I can to help them, but if there’s no public news reports or other information that can corroborate their stories, I am unable to do anything for them. Believe me, I WANT to help them, but it would be legally reckless of me to post a story without sufficient evidence. I generally also only publish reports about clerics from the United States — mostly Protestant, Evangelical, Southern Baptist, and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB). While I post stories featuring Catholic priests from time to time, I usually leave such reporting to others. The same could be said of widespread clergy sexual misconduct in Africa. The point I am trying to make here is this: 600 published reports is just the tip of the iceberg. As of today, I am also sitting on over 300 clergy sexual misconduct stories I have not published due to a lack of sufficient evidence or a shortage of time to do so.
The clergy, abetted by psychologically damaged followers, are the most corrupt class of men in society.