What is the average age of the abused "kids"?

[Asking]

I am having a discussion in another message board, I say that banning homosexuals from the priesthood from now on is good, but the other guys are saying that homosexuality is not related to pedophilia.

Whats is the average age of the abused kids? if they were like 8 years old I guess it is pedophilia, but a priest whoa buses a 15 years old is homosexual, or pederast at most, not a pedohpile.

 

[Robert_Bay]

I am moving this thread to the Sacraments forum. Holy Orders is a Sacrament and it has been decided that threads related to this topic belong here.

 

[gilliam]

The report found that 4,392 priests had been accused of sexually abusing minors between 1950 and 2002, or about 4 percent of the 109,694 priests in active ministry during that period. Of the 10,667 reported victims, 81 percent were male, the report said, and more than three-quarters of the victims were postpubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.

Instead, most fell victim to ephebophiles, men who are sexually attracted to adolescent or postpubescent children.

Karen Terry, the principal investigator for the team of academics from John Jay College of Criminal Justice that carried out the research in the other quantitative report, said the average age of victims was 12.6 years, but the most common category of victims was a boy between 11 and 14. That category accounted for 40 percent of all victims, she said.

The report found that 51 percent of victims, including females, were between 11 and 14; 27 percent were between 15 and 17; 16 percent were from 8 to 10; and nearly 6 percent were under 7. Male victims tended to be older than female victims, Terry said.

The only age group in which girls accounted for more victims than boys was ages 1 to 7, when they made up 58 percent of victims. In the 8-to-10 age group, boys made up 71 percent of victims. Boys accounted for 85 percent of victims in both the 11-to-14 and 15-to-17 age categories. The report found that 3.6 percent of abusive priests abused both boys and girls of all ages, while 22.6 percent abused only females and 64 percent abused only males. In nearly 10 percent of the reported cases, the gender of the victim was unknown.

Terry said the abuse peaked in 1970, and data compiled for the report indicate that between 1970 and 1979 there were more than five times as many male victims as female victims. In the 1960s and 1980s, there were three to four times more male victims than female victims. The gender gap was narrower in both the 1950s and 1990s. Critics, including Hudson, who blame homosexuals for most of the problem, say there was an influx of gay priests in the 1960s and 1970s, but it is unknown how many priests were gay.

boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories5/022804_victims.htm