Lenten Mercy-Meditation: Joseph's Month of March and Failing Our Children

Murillo ~ Saint Joseph and the Christ Child

The Carmelite nuns of Terre Haute, Indianna recently sent an invitation to share in the novena they pray every year in anticipation of the March 19th Feast of Saint Joseph. Beneath the icon on the front of the card was printed, Saint Joseph ~ Mentor of the Merciful One. I've heard Joseph called Guardian, Protector and Guide, but Mentor is an especially active word and beautiful. Then I came across these statistics reporting on the sex abuse of young people in our own country and thought, how deeply we fail our children. 

• The average age for first abuse is 9.9 years for boys and 9.6 years for girls.

• Children with disabilities are 4 to 10 times more vulnerable to sexual abuse than their non-disabled peers.

• 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse. Boys are probably higher, but less likely to report.

• Over the course of their lifetime, 28% of U.S. youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized

• 62,939 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in 2012. (Approximately 30% are  reported to the authorities so the actual number of abused children is much higher.)

• Approximately 1.8 million adolescents in the U.S. have been the victims of sexual assault.

• 93% know their abuser. 34.2 % of attackers were family members and 58.7% were acquaintances. Only 7% were strangers to the victims.

• Nearly 50% of all the victims of forcible sodomy, sexual assault with an object, and forcible fondling are children under the age of 12.

• There are 60 million survivors of child sex abuse in the U.S. today.

A Catholic can't claim to love Saint Joseph and not have the care and protection of children right up front in his or her list of priorities. It is sometimes said of Catholics that we admire the saints more than copy them. Joseph has the young Jesus by the hand in this Murilo painting. For Lent, let's find an active way to take care of children, if even from a distance.


Sources:
RAINN: Rape Abuse and Incest National Network
Parents for Megan's Law/The Crime Victim's Center
The U.S. Department of Justice NSOPW (National Sex Offender Public Website)