Share
Eight hundred million dollars.
That’s what the Archdiocese of New York has agreed to pay to settle sexual abuse claims brought by nearly 1,300 people.
Decades of sexual abuse swept under the rug. The Catholic Church has spent nearly a quarter-century answering for the sexual abuse of children. Some of the reporting is highly exaggerated, thanks to an anti-Catholic and overall anti-Christian American press, and lawyers who want to tap the deep pockets of the Catholic Church. But the larger point is not to excuse immoral sexual behavior. The church is susceptible to bad behavior just like any other institution. We live in a fallen world.
No Christian defense justifies any of it. Jesus Christ reserved some of His harshest rhetoric for those who harm little ones. Millstones for everyone involved.
But there is another institution that is entrusted with America’s children. One that exercises enormous authority over their day-to-day lives, shapes their understanding of the world, and demands the confidence of their parents.
The American public school system.
Do we have millstones for them?
In 2022, Fox News Digital documented at least 349 K-12 public school teachers arrested on child sex-related charges during a single year. 262 of them involved alleged crimes against students. To be fair, these were arrests, not convictions. And the investigation counted only publicly reported cases, which means there were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of unreported cases.
Still, 349 arrests should sound some alarm bells.
The story gets darker.
In 2004, a report from the Department of Education estimated that 9.6 percent of students experienced some form of sexual misconduct from an educator or faculty member while they were in school. We are talking about physical and verbal misconduct. In 2022, a study of 6,632 recent high school graduates found that 11.7% reported some form of sexual misconduct by an educator or faculty member.
The story gets even darker.
Charol Shakeshaft, a researcher famous for her studies on sexual misconduct in the school system, worked on the 2004 DOE report.
She wrote, "Only 1 percent of the cases did superintendents follow up to ensure that molesting teachers did not continue teaching elsewhere. In 54 percent, superintendents accepted the teachers' resignations or retirements. Of the 121 teachers removed this way, administrators knew for certain that 16 percent resumed teaching in other districts... Moving molesting teachers from school district to school district is a common phenomenon. And in only 1 percent of the cases do superintendents notify the new school district. The term ’passing the trash’ is the preferred jargon among educators."
Earlier this year, a 27-year-old sports teacher at Matthews Middle School in Crystal Lake, IL, was charged with four felony counts related to child sexual abuse material. He taught at the College of Lake County in 2025. In the Twin Cities metro, Aaron Hjermstad, now infamously known as the “Minnesota Monster,” molested over one hundred boys across multiple schools.
Yet, there is no reckoning in the public school system. No headlines calling for heads to roll. Why is the church held to a different standard than public schools?
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a statement to Fox News Digital: "The number of teachers arrested for child sex abuse is just the tip of the iceberg — much as it was for the Catholic Church prior to widespread exposure and investigation in the early 2000s. The best available academic research, published by the Department of Education, suggests that nearly 10% of public school students suffer from physical abuse between kindergarten and twelfth grade."
"According to that research, the scale of sexual abuse in the public schools is nearly 100 times greater than that of the Catholic Church. The question for critics who seek to downplay the extent of public-school sexual abuse is this: How many arrests need to happen before you consider it a problem? How many children need to be sexually abused by teachers before you consider it a crisis?"
We should be in full-blown crisis mode.
A religious leader abuses a child, society blames the church. When a teacher abuses a child, society blames the teacher.
That’s nonsense.
A school district’s moral responsibilities should not be any less demanding.
Psalm 127 describes children as a heritage from the Lord. They don’t belong to the school districts or the state. Sin doesn’t become less sinful when the perpetrator is a government employee instead of a religious leader.
America needs independent investigations, enforceable reporting requirements, meaningful penalties for administrators who knowingly conceal abuse, and safeguards preventing offending educators from quietly moving between districts. We need to throw offenders in jail and keep them there.
Which brings us back to Rufo's two questions: How many arrests need to happen before you consider it a problem? How many children need to be sexually abused by teachers before you consider it a crisis? The sobering answer is probably more troubling than the questions: we don’t know. We don’t know because we don’t care.
The Church got a reckoning because society is eager to demonize Christianity.
Parents deserve transparency and meaningful educational choices. School vouchers would be a good start.
The Catholic Church abuse scandal should have taught America a universal lesson about institutional power, human corruption, and the danger of protecting reputations at the expense of the innocent.
Instead, we've too often treated it as an indictment of religion.
The issue isn't whether the Church deserved its reckoning. It did. The issue is why America's public schools haven't faced the same reckoning. Children deserve the same protection whether the adult entrusted with their care teaches The Book of Job or geometry.
When you look at the rampant abortion rates, LGBT ideology permeating classrooms, and lack of accountability regarding sexual abuse in public schools, the verdict is clear as day: our society only pretends to care about children.
Written by Vincent Williams
He is a former Music Director at Windy City Underground radio, an on-air talent at Logik Radio and a board operator, sound engineer and videographer. Writing has always been an integral part of Vincent's life. He is a born-again Christian, a lifelong Chicagoland resident, a zodiac Cancer and a lover of anything mint-flavored.
Latest Articles
Explore More Topics
There is another institution that is entrusted with America’s children. One that exercises enormous authority over their day-to-day lives, shapes their understanding of the world, and demands the confidence of their parents.
The American public school system.
Do we have millstones for them?