UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Dennis Coday | May. 20, 2016
The U.S. bishops’ conference released this morning its 13th Annual Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
The report, which covers the period July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015, is really two reports in one:
An auditor — this year as in the last couple years, the Rochester, N.Y.-based StoneBridge Business Partners — reports on the compliance of bishops and diocese with the U.S. bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, adopted in 2002 at the bishops’ meeting in Dallas.
Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, or CARA, reports on its Annual Survey of Allegations and Costs of the abuse crisis, a report it has prepared since 2004.
“The Charter,” the report explains, “lays the foundation for child protection in our dioceses, parishes, and schools as it outlines a multi-faceted approach to how the Church responds to child sexual abuse.” The audit, then can be seen as a measure of the success of implementing the charter.
The audit reports that five ecclesial jurisdictions/ecclesiastical units are not in compliance with the Dallas Charter. For the 13th consecutive year the Lincoln, Neb., diocese and the eparchies (the Orthodox churches’ equivalent of a Latin rite diocese) of St. Peter the Apostle, Our Lady of Deliverance of Newark for Syrians, Our Lady of Nareg for Armenians and Stamford for Ukrainians did not participate in the audit.
The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, the diocese-like structure created by the Vatican in 2012 for former Anglican communities and clergy seeking to become Catholic, also did not participate in the audit. …
Cesareo notes, as has he and his predecessors have noted in past reports, that progress the bishops have made in addressing this issue can “foster a false sense of security and lead to complacency.” He cites several explains of complacency:
* Some diocesan review boards rarely meet or have not met in several years.
* Some dioceses do background checks on personnel and volunteers, but no follow-up rescreening after several years have passed.
* Some diocese policies have not been updated to reflect revisions that have been made to the Charter.
“These are examples of how easy it is to become complacent, which opens the possibility for problems to occur that could have been prevented,” Cesareo writes.
As evidence of the danger of complacency, Cesareo notes that while most allegations of sexual abuse come from adults reporting abuse from years past, in this reporting cycle are 26 allegations of sexual abuse of current minors by clergy. Seven of those allegations were substantiated and nine were under investigation. Nine were unsubstantiated.
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