Pedophilia / History Repeats Itself / Abuse scandal has rocked Catholic Church for years

The United States -

As reporters often do, I began researching my advance story on the Catholic bishops meeting in Dallas last week by looking back at my "clips" to remind me of what I'd written about all this in the past.

"Gathering in a city rocked by two church sex scandals," one story began, "the nation's Catholic bishops meet in New Orleans today to discuss rising concerns about pedophile priests."

Change the dateline from New Orleans to Dallas and the entire story reads like it was written yesterday. But it wasn't. I wrote it nine years ago, in June 1993.

Is this repetition an indictment of the bishops, who never seem to learn, or the news media, which keep telling the same story?

In my view, both -- although the media commit the lesser evil.

I've lost count of the number of times that newspapers -- including this one -- have told their readers this year that the sex abuse scandal in the church "began in January in Boston."

It didn't.

This incarnation of the scandal began in the early 1980s in New Orleans and erupted every few years in places like Santa Fe, Dallas, Santa Rosa, Stockton, San Francisco, Los Angeles and many other dioceses. Basically, this year's story is the same sad, sensational tale we've been telling for at least 15 years.

Why have this year's revelations in Boston (where the scandal previously erupted in 1992) turned into a huge national story?

Read the article at SFGate.com dated June 16, 2002