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	Churches Emphasize Employee Conduct Policies By Gregg Macdonald Fairfax Times May 6, 2011 http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/cms/story.php?id=3449 In the wake of a recent report that as many as a dozen teenage girls might have been sexually abused by a youth counselor at Vienna Presbyterian Church from 2001 to 2005, some church leaders are emphasizing stringent safeguards meant to prevent such incidents do exist. Dick McFail is the stated clerk of the National Capital Presbytery, which oversees 108 Presbyterian churches in the Southern Maryland-Washington, D.C.-Northern Virginia area. He said the presbytery has both a strong sexual misconduct policy and a Sexual Misconduct Response Coordinating Team made up of six staffers who investigate sexual misconduct claims. "We handle calls from both church members and church officials who may want to report an issue," he said. McFail said Vienna Presbyterian appears to have contained its particular scandal within its church and did not make the presbytery aware of it in a timely manner, as they should have. "We have solid policies in place to handle these types of issues when they are brought to us," he said. According to McFail, 40 of the 108 area Presbyterian churches overseen by the presbytery have reported sexual issues "over an extended period of time." "However, there are important distinctions," he said. "If someone calls me and reports something to me that seems to be a crime, such as sexual abuse of someone under 18 or someone with a developmental disorder, I call the police. But sexual misconduct by a minister with a nondisabled person 18 or older would be an offense of our policy, but not necessarily a crime. We handle both types of issues." A 2007 Associated Press report found there have been 13,000 credible accusations of sexual misconduct against Catholic churches since 1950, according to the Catholic Church, but that Protestant numbers are harder to come by because the denominations are less centralized. The 2007 report states there are about 224,000 Protestant churches in the U.S., and more than 260 sex abuse cases are reported annually to three insurance companies that together insure nearly 75 percent of the churches for liability against child abuse and sexual misconduct cases. "A church is like any other employer," said Jim Oakes, chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia. "They have employee conduct policies in place that aren't always adhered to." In January, two employees of Truro Anglican Church in Fairfax City, including a longtime priest, were fired for surfing pornography websites on church computers. "In that particular case, those individuals violated established church policies, but no crimes were committed," Oakes said. "In the case of Vienna Presbyterian, I personally believe that a church employee may have violated a basic trust. Churches have a special obligation to assure that pastors, and particularly those who work with youth, are more thoroughly screened than say, employees at Sears, because we put them in positions of trust." Oakes said Truro and other area Anglican churches have many such protections in place. "Everyone we hire, as well as our lay leadership, goes through a pretty thorough background check," he said. "In addition to that, every employee is given annual or semiannual training in the avoidance of sexual misconduct." Oakes said employees who by the nature of their job will have contact with children get more extensive and more specific sexual misconduct training than other employees. "All of our doors in Truro, with the exception of bathrooms and janitors closets, also have windows cut into them so that someone cannot shield what they are doing from someone who might be walking by," he said. "Christians are just as human as everybody else and are subject to temptation as much as everybody else. When you put people in tempting situations you sometimes get trouble. There are many common-sense safeguards that you can deliberately put in their way to keep that from happening." Contact: gmacdonald@fairfaxtimes.com
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