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	Catholic Church's Coloring and Comic Books Take Aim at Sexual Abuse By Sewell Chan New York Times December 4, 2007 http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/avoiding-sexual-abuse-is-topic-of-catholic-coloring-and-comic-books/?hp A program by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York to distribute educational materials — a coloring book and a comic book — to children to help them avoid becoming victims of sexual abuse has drawn attention in Newsweek and The New York Post. An independent expert said that the books could send the wrong message if not accompanied by proper context and guidance from adults. In one page of the coloring book — for students in the first through fifth grades — a smiling angel tells an altar boy who is putting on a vestment: "For safety's sake, a child and an adult shouldn't be alone in a closed room together. If a child and an adult happen to be alone, someone should know where they are and the door should be open or have a big window in it." The angel adds, "Remember, it's always safer with a group of people you know, but if you are alone with an adult, make sure others know where to find you." The comic book, for schoolchildren from the sixth through eighth grades, tells the stories of a girl and a boy who have been victims of sexual abuse in separate incidents, and how they handled the situations. The comic book urges children to tell a trusted adult if they have been abused. The books were illustrated by Charles Barnett, an artist in Lake Katrine, N.Y. While the books carry messages that are widely echoed in other educational programs for children, they also arise from the context of the sexual abuse scandals that have roiled the Catholic Church. "It is sad, but it is a reflection of the times," said Edward T. Mechmann, a former federal and state prosecutor who was hired in 2005 to direct the archdiocese's Safe Environment Program. "We have to protect the kids and make sure when they deal with adults that it's within the proper boundaries." Mr. Mechmann said his office's mandate was to implement the Dallas Charter issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002. The New York archdiocese covers Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, as well as six suburban counties to the north. (The Diocese of Brooklyn covers Brooklyn, Queens and part of Long Island.) Mr. Mechmann's responsibilities include background checks for clergy and lay people who work with children, and an educational program used in parochial schools and religious education programs. In an interview today, Dr. Eli H. Newberger, a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School and a leading expert on child sexual abuse, warned in an interview that young children may misinterpret well-intended messages. "With regard to kids, any such simple message as, 'Don't be alone with an adult in the room,' is susceptible to multiple interpretations children are going to place on it given their age, their previous experience with caring adults and with the person and the medium from whom the message comes," he said. He also cautioned that the books, coming from the Catholic Church, may inspire mistrust in some parents aware of the various abuse scandals. Dr. Newberger added: Conversations with very young children need to be carried out by the people closest to those kids, whom the children trust and who can talk about what this means. With first graders, very often these kids don't easily go into the mode of thinking that enables them to deal with contingencies, the kind of what-if questions, which doesn't develop until age 10 or 11. The worry I have is that for younger children, the simple unadorned message, "Don't go into any room alone with an adult," carries with it implicitly a sense of danger and of fear. I think it is naïve to assume that a child is going to get the intended message without experiencing a measure of distress or doubt. Dr. Newberger, who has studied sexual abuse prevention and treatment efforts for decades, added: "Research on these prevention initiatives is incomplete and not wholly convincing. What these various initiatives frequently do, however, is enable children to talk about and disclose that have been worrying them, things that have happened to them. Parents and others have to be prepared for these unanticipated conversations, which inevitably follow." Told about Dr. Newberger's comments, Mr. Mechmann said that the coloring and comic books are integrated as part of a larger curriculum, that the materials are taken home and that parents and guardians should discuss the materials with their children. Mr. Mechmann emphasized that the curriculum is only one part of the archdiocese's child protection efforts. He said the archdiocese had separate codes of conduct for clergy members and for lay people, which make it clear that adults should never be alone with a child in an unsupervised setting. The code includes narrow exceptions in settings like confession and pastoral counseling.
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