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	Worst of Sex-Abuse Litigation Is Over, Experts Say, Though Scars Left behind By Emily Stimpson Our Sunday Visitor August 3, 2007 http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=24924 Huntington, Ind. (Our Sunday Visitor) – The storm is passing. In mid-July, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles reached a $660 million settlement with more than 500 victims of clergy sexual abuse, it also brought to a close the largest number of abuse cases in one diocese still pending in U.S. courts. Attempts to lift the civil statute of limitations in other states, allowing victims abused as long ago as the 1930s to bring suit against their diocese, have failed everywhere but Delaware. That means the tidal wave of clergy-abuse allegations that followed California's temporary lifting of its statute of limitations is not likely to recur. Throughout the United States, the number of criminal allegations against priests and religious also continues to drop. According to a report compiled by the Georgetown University-based Center for Research in the Apostolate (CARA), both the number of victims and allegations has dropped each of the past three years. Of the 632 allegations made in 2006, 60 percent of the perpetrators were named in previous allegations and 70 percent were either dead, already removed from ministry or had left the priesthood or religious life by the time the allegation was reported. Ten percent of the allegations were proven unsubstantiated. "The worst of the litigation is over," affirmed Judge Michael Merz, chair of the independent National Review Board, established by the U.S. bishops in response to the scandal. "And with it, will go the polarizing public attention that accompanies big litigation and the attempts to garner press attention that make people feel the matter is still red-hot." Despite the loss of public scrutiny that will occur once the abuse scandal moves off the front pages, Merz thinks it highly unlikely that anyone in the American Catholic hierarchy will again be tempted to hush up abuse allegations or shuffle offenders from parish to parish. "$2 billion is a lesson that's hard not to learn," said Merz, referring to the more than $2 billion paid out by U.S. dioceses in settlement costs. "The people who make the decisions have got the message." Getting it right Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at CARA, also pointed to the "stringent measures" put in place by the bishops in the 2002 Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People as a significant check on the problem's re-emergence. "Although the policies are voluntary, the dioceses have been almost universal in implementing them," she said. "That's absolutely a check." Those policies include background checks on all church employees and volunteers who come into contact with children, as well as mandatory "safe-environment training," which helps children and adults both identify and respond to improper behavior. The new policies also include not allowing offenders to remain in ministry. "There are just more eyes out there now," Gautier said. "We have a new level of awareness." Merz also believes the screening process at the seminary level for men who could likely exhibit pedophilic behavior has improved. He admits, however, that there is still a great deal of uncertainty over how to screen out men who are not true pedophiles, but who rather, years after their ordination, commit single acts of abuse against minors. "I'm much more skeptical about the processes in place for seminarians," he said. "We're still not sure of how to screen for all possible types of offenders." Loss of faith As the storm of litigation that has consumed dioceses across the country for the past five years dies out, and as the church in the United States moves ahead with her plan for preventing future storms, the question people are beginning to ask is, "How much damage lies in the storm's wake?" Assessing that, said Merz, is an almost impossible task. "It's like asking somebody at the Council of Trent how much damage was done by the Reformation," he said. "We won't know the real cost for years." At least in the short-term, however, the cost appears to be far less than some expected. According to Dean Hoge, professor of sociology at The Catholic University of America, the overwhelming majority of Catholics have not experienced the sex-abuse scandal as " a crisis of the creed or a crisis of the faith." Rather, he said, they believe "the crisis is that this church isn't being managed as it should be." "If there's been a loss of faith, it's been a loss of faith in the church's leadership. And that's leadership at the highest levels – the bishops, not the pastors," he noted. Victims' scars But even that effect is beginning to wane, with a survey conducted by CARA showing that the number of people who were "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with the bishops' leadership rebound from 57 percent in January 2003 to 74 percent by October 2005. Hoge also said there's no research that suggests any widespread morale problem among priests, while The Official Catholic Directory shows that adult conversions to the Catholic faith held steady throughout the crisis, with between 140,000 and 150,000 people continuing to enter the church each year. One possible long-term effect that does concern Hoge is the scandal's impact on young people. "They're not as committed to the institutional church as older Catholics, and they give their trust much less automatically," he said. "The church's leaders really have to buy the younger generation's trust with their own actions." And there is, of course, one major piece of devastation that nobody expects to go away anytime soon – the scars left on the lives of the victims of sexual abuse. "There are still an awful lot of people out there with a lot of hurt," said Merz. "That's going to be with us a very long while." - - - Emily Stimpson writes from Ohio for Our Sunday Visitor.
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