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	Report: Lapses in Catholic Bishops" Child Safety Policy By Rose French Star Tribune April 12, 2011 http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/119695884.html Auditors hired by the U.S. bishops to check child safety in Catholic dioceses each year warned in a new report of a drift away from parts of the church’s nine-year-old abuse prevention plan, the Associated Press reports. “The agency the bishops hired to conduct the review said 55 of the 188 participating dioceses needed to make improvements or risk being out of compliance with the national policy, more than double the number of dioceses who were found lacking in 2009.” "Among the most common problems the auditors identified: —Allowing clergy who had been barred from ministry to lead public prayers —Downsizing local child safety offices, partly due to the recession, leaving key tasks undone —Failing to meet with leaders of all religious orders that have priests working in a diocese —Not checking whether safeguards were in place on the parish level, despite a directive since 2006 to do so —Failing to collect written notice from parents who decide to keep their children from abuse prevention training "The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ policy, called the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” was adopted in 2002 as the scandal over abusive priests in the Archdiocese of Boston spread through the American church." Mary Jane Doerr, associate director of the secretariat of child and youth protection of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in an interview with the Star Tribune on Tuesday that a list of the 55 dioceses would not be released. She said Minnesota’s dioceses are in compliance with the charter directives. “A companion study to the audit found the abuse crisis continues to batter the church. A 2010 survey of U.S. dioceses by the Council for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University found the number of new abuse claims rose compared to 2009. The overwhelming majority of the allegations were made by adults who said they had been molested decades ago as children,” the AP reports. “Dioceses received 428 credible allegations against 345 clergy. According to the survey, more than half of the accused clergy had faced previous claims and about two-thirds had already been removed from the priesthood or had died. Seven of the claims involved the abuse of minors in 2010. “Religious orders separately reported receiving 77 allegations against 60 offenders last year. Dioceses and their insurers paid nearly $124 million in settlements, attorneys’ fees and other abuse-related costs in 2010, up from about $104 million in 2009. All told, the scandal’s price tag for settlements and other costs is near $3 billion, according to surveys commissioned by the bishops and news reports.”
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