Chicago City Wire

Tom Hampson, a licensed criminal investigator and founder of the Truth Alliance Foundation, recently appeared on the Chicago Morning Answer radio talk show to talk with host Dan Proft about the degree of child sexual abuse in public schools compared to the current Catholic church.

On the May 24 episode of Chicago's Morning Answer radio show, host Proft welcomed Hampson, a criminal investigator with 50 years of investigative experience. They first discussed the statement made by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich about the level of transparency and responsibility in the Catholic Church, reporting every single case of abuse and having a published list on their website of all ministers who were found to have substantiated claims of child abuse, no matter when or where the abuse occurred.

According to Hampson, the church has become much more transparent on the matter of sexual abuse since 2006, saying “over the last few years they've been very transparent with incidents that have come up and also keeping their website current as far as they know for the cases that they've got.” Hampson said he believes the church has improved greatly with screening and approving all volunteers and people that work with kids in the church, although he added that he thinks they should do a better job of screening the priests themselves. “Other than that, they seem to be on the right track,” Hampson reported.

Proft asked Hampson to compare the church and its private schools to a school system like Chicago Public Schools, which reportedly “opened 477 investigations into child abuse just in calendar year 2022.” Hampson believes that “the problem of child sex abuse in public schools is far worse than it is in the church.” He said that in the last 50 years, the quality of character for public school teachers has greatly declined.

Proft cited a study that showed roughly 10% of all students in American public schools are sexually abused in some way each year. Hampson said that the school systems are not taking any steps to addressing this like the church has done since 2006 and they are in fact “going in the opposite direction.”

"Predators go where the prey is and with children, if they're interested in children, the most prevalent place they'll try to show up is in the schools," Hampson said. "And they will gravitate toward the easiest place that they can get into. So unless you realize that and take steps to identify them and screen them out, you're going to have problems and I think that's what the church learned a long time ago and the schools still haven't learned it. 

"The problem is that less than 2% of predators are ever caught, ever; 98% of predators never are encountered, they never become identified, nobody ever knows that they even exist."