BishopAccountability.org
	Diocese Wins Approval from Bishops' Group By Sam Hemingway Burlington Free Press October 23, 2007 http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071023/NEWS01/710230310/1009/NEWS05 The statewide Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington has satisfied a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' mandate that it provide child sexual abuse prevention training to all its workers, diocesan officials said Monday. "I am very happy that the diocese has been found in compliance," Bishop Salvatore Matano said. "This is wonderful news." Matano said the diocese was told earlier this month that it had met the standard set by the bishop's group by a consultant who audited the diocese's efforts last month. "It is certainly a major accomplishment for the diocese," said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the bishops' group. "It is a sign of how seriously it is trying to deal with this terrible crisis." In April, a report done for the bishops' conference listed the Burlington diocese as one of only two dioceses in the country that had not complied with a section of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People regarding the training. The diocese, in the midst of defending itself in a series of priest-child sexual abuse civil cases in Chittenden Superior Court, was stung by the report. Matano responded by sending a letter to diocesan priests urging them to help the church comply with the policy as quickly as possible. Monday, Matano praised Kevin Scully, the diocese's director of safe environment, for completing the background check and training of an estimated 3,200 paid and unpaid church workers. Scully is a former Burlington police chief. Scully said that over the past six months, about 2,000 church personnel -- most of them volunteer church workers -- had undergone the trainings. He said the background checks had turned up problems with an estimated 100 of the 3,200 workers; those 100 were told they could no longer perform their duties as church workers. "I was not that surprised," Scully said of the 100 figure. "Many of us have had difficulties come up in our lives. These were not people who were necessarily sex offenders but people who had demonstrated physical or assaultive behaviors, things like that." Scully said the training involves three-hour workshops and will be followed up by periodic training via the Internet. Workers who do not keep up with the training and fail to heed reminders to do so, will be disqualified from carrying out church duties, he said. David Clohessy, director of Survivors' Network of Those Abused by Priests or SNAP, a national watchdog group, said it was unfortunate that the Burlington diocese took so long to comply with the bishops' group mandate. "We're glad, but it is still troubling that it took years to meet even this very low bar for compliance," Clohessy said. "These kind of standards we believe most organizations dealing with children implemented years and years ago." Matano said he hoped that, by satisfying the charter's requirements, the diocese is sending a compassionate signal to victims of priest-child sexual abuse in Vermont. "This is an opportunity to reach out to all those who were hurt and show we are sensitive to their healing and reconciliation," Matano said. Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
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