The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A comparative study of the Catholic Church and the Military.

I am writing a book and several articles that examine how and why the military and the Catholic Church have responded to cases of sexual assault and sex abuse within their institutions as they have, and the conditions under which civil authorities and elected officials do or do not hold the institutions to account. The project, mostly focused on the US, with comparisons to Australia and the United Kingdom, also explores whether the presumed sacredness or sacrosanct auras of the institutions play a role in how the institutions respond and whether public authorities and citizens defer to them. The project was the focus of my work while a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, AY 2017-18. As one part of this project, with Flinn Scholar and former Arizona State University Honors College student Mia Armstrong, I have published an article in Law & Society Review that examines whether, as is sometimes claimed by the media and some members of Congress, the US military’s handling of sexual assault cases is “chaotic”, and what might be the reasons cases are handled in the ways that they are. Another paper, in Journal of Church and State, examines the religious-based child abuse in Ireland and the recalibration of religion-state relations in the aftermath of the scandals. An article, with Jennet Kirkpatrick in the American Journal of Political Science, examines the US military’s restricted reporting option in light of care ethics and justice.