I have an intuition -- I have not researched it, nor am I aware of any studies that have addressed it -- that the difference that Vatican II made with respect to clerical sexual abuse has less to do with the frequency of abuse and more to do with the willingness of victims and their families to confront it. Stated differently, I think the generation of Catholics who entered the 1980s as adults and as parents had been formed in a Vatican II ecclesiology which taught that they had rights and duties as members of the church. If they were still deferential to the clergy, they were less so that their parents were; if priests were still on a pedestal, the pedestal was lower and the parents of victims were willing to take down the priests who harmed their children. The post-Vatican II parents were less willing than earlier generations to go away in silence. Vatican II taught them to think and act as adults in the church, and many of them took that teaching seriously.