On January 5, CNN’s Glenn Beck invited supermodel Janice Dickinson to talk about her life and career. In the course of the discussion, she mentioned that her father was a pedophile who tried to molest her when she was young. She advised everyone who has been molested to “tell a neighbor, tell a friend, tell a priest. Not a priest, they’re all pedophiles, but tell someone.” [Our emphasis.] Beck let her off the hook by saying—with a smile on his face—“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
On January 8, Beck discussed a movie about a pedophile priest and said that tales of sexual abuse by priests “are increasingly common these days.” This is flatly wrong: most of the molesters were homosexual priests—not pedophiles—and most of the damage was done in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The most recent data (for 2005) show that .02 percent of priests had a credible accusation made against them.
In a day and age when it is common for everyone on TV to watch their P’s and Q’s about making sweeping statements of a negative kind, the one exception continues to be Catholic priests.
