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	Bishops Appoint Merz to Panel The Magistrate Will Help the Catholic Church Deal with Its Priest-Child Abuse Scandal By Tom Beyerlein Dayton Daily News May 30, 2007 http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/05/30/ddn053007merz.html The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday named U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz of Dayton as chairman of the National Review Board, a lay organization formed by the bishops five years ago to help cope with the priest child sexual abuse scandal. Merz's two-year term as chairman starts Friday. He has been a member of the board since 2004. The board's priorities, Merz said, are to oversee completion of a major study on the "causes and context" of the scandal and to evaluate the effectiveness of safety training for children and annual audits to check whether the nation's dioceses are implementing child-protection policies. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York and Fordham University were commissioned by the bishops in 2005 to examine why so many priests abused boys, especially in the 1970s, and why the number of reported incidents has declined. "Why was there a surge of this in the 1970s and '80s and why did that surge go away?" Merz said. "If you don't know what went wrong, you're at risk of repeating it." The board also wants to know whether Safe Environment training for children is working, and it plans to send auditors to some parishes in the next cycle of annual audits, instead of working only at the diocese level. Are bishops listening to the lay review board? "It's a mixed picture," Merz said. "You've got some bishops who are very comfortable working with lay people and some who are not. Some of them are still under litigation, and that affects their ability to listen because they're listening to their lawyers." Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2264 or tbeyerlein@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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