What Do the State of New York and the Catholic Church Have in Common?

It is this: Physical and sexual abuse of the powerless became an institutional norm. You all know, by now, the Church's sordid history in this country and that abuses continue to come to light around the world.

In New York State, the abuse of disabled people in state-run group homes was routinely covered up. State law requires reporting cases of abuse to law enforcement; the administrators of the group homes flouted that law. The managers ordered employees at the group homes not to document cases of abuse or neglect, telling them, in writing, that if there was nothing written down, the incident never happened.

One would hope that the end result of this will be both lengthy prison terms for the perpetrators and the bosses who covered it up, along with meaningful oversight.

But knowing something about how New York state government operates, I predict this: The odds of some underlings going to prison is pretty high. The odds of any of the bosses going to prison are only slightly better than the chance that Rumsfeld will see the inside of a jail cell. And the odds of any meaningful oversight or changes to the way New York State deals with the residents of group homes is nonexistent.