ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Newsday [Melville NY]
February 10, 2025
By Bart Jones
The Catholic church on Long Island says it has taken major steps to protect children from clergy sex abuse and is seeing real progress some two decades after the worst scandal in its history erupted.
The Diocese of Rockville Centre said new measures, such as automatically reporting all allegations to law enforcement, have created one of the safest environments anywhere for children. They point to dramatically falling numbers of reported current cases as evidence the policies are working.
The diocese said it immediately removes from ministry any clergy member accused of sexual abuse when allegations have been deemed credible by law enforcement or church-hired investigators — and announces it at Sunday Masses in the priest’s or deacon’s parish in front of often-stunned parishioners.
It reports all allegations, regardless of whether they are initially deemed credible, to the local district attorney for potential criminal prosecution, the diocese said. And it has put some 160,000 clergy, employees and volunteers through training aimed at preventing child sex abuse.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- The Catholic Church on Long Island says it has taken major steps to protect children following the clergy sex abuse scandal that erupted in 2002.
- The Diocese of Rockville Centre contends that current cases of reported abuse are way down.
- Some critics of the church agree it has taken significant steps, but others call the measures “smoke and mirrors” and say that systemic problems remain.
The church said it screens candidates for the priesthood to try to prevent potential abusers from getting to the altar in the first place. And if alleged abuse does happen, it has a confidential hotline for reporting it: 516-594-9063.
“It is arguable that more has been done to actively address and prevent abuse in the Church over the past 20 years than in any other institution,” the diocese said in a statement.
Rockville Centre, one of the largest Catholic dioceses in the nation, with 1.2 million baptized Catholics, was facing 600 lawsuits for clergy sexual abuse when it declared bankruptcy in October 2020. Most allegations dated to the 1960s through the 1980s, said diocesan spokesman the Rev. Eric Fasano. The diocese reached a $323 million settlement with survivors in December.
About 40 Catholic dioceses, archdioceses or religious orders in the United States have declared bankruptcy because of clergy sex abuse lawsuits since the scandal broke nationally in 2002, according to Bishop Accountability, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that tracks accused clergy sex abusers. Rockville Centre’s payout was the largest of any of them.
Some Catholics said they believe the diocese’s claims of making children safer are exaggerated and that it could be doing more to root out abusive clergy.
Numbers down dramatically
Richard Tollner, a clergy sex abuse survivor who headed a committee of survivors during the diocese’s recent bankruptcy proceedings, said, “Whatever steps they have taken I am certain they can do more.” He thinks the number of reported abuse cases has gone down in part because “there are more people watching from the public.”
Since 2003, two deacons and one priest have been accused of current cases of sexual abuse in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, the diocese said. The case of the priest was reported in 2007. The deacons’ cases were reported in 2023 but did not involve children from any church-related setting, Fasano said.
Those three cases over a two-decade period compare to more than 100 reported cases per decade when the abuse was at its worst in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, according to church officials.
Some Catholics, including some fierce critics of the church, said they believe the diocese has taken important steps to protect children. While the measures may not be perfect, they are a far cry from practices before the scandal broke, they said.
“It’s not ideal. It’s not watertight. But it’s an improvement, and I think that children are safer as a result,” said Terry McKiernan, a leader of Bishop Accountability, which has been highly critical of the Catholic Church’s handling of the scandal.
Whereas in the past accused priests were quietly shuffled from parish to parish by church officials, according to authorities and a 2003 Suffolk County grand jury report, today they are removed from ministry if an accusation is considered credible, Fasano said.
Critics said that abusive priests often can’t be criminally prosecuted because it can take years for victims to come forward — sometimes long past the statute of limitations. But, under the new protocol, the priest would be removed and unable to do any more harm if the allegations are credible, the church said.
Fasano said that while clergy are presumed innocent during the investigations, “false accusations do occur and can have devastating consequences. Great care is taken, always in cooperation with law enforcement, to protect the safety of the public while preserving the reputation of those who might be falsely accused.”
During the bankruptcy proceedings, the diocese submitted to the court a list of accused priests dating to its founding in 1957. McKiernan called that significant, and said not all Catholic dioceses around the country have provided such lists.
The diocese’s efforts to make the church safer for children date back to the early 2000s, when numerous allegations of clergy sex abuse emerged.
After the Boston Globe wrote a series of articles starting in early 2002 about the decades-long scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston, news media exposés quickly surfaced in other dioceses around the country, including in Newsday on Long Island.
By June 2002, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, meeting in Dallas, adopted a series of mandatory reforms that were dubbed “zero tolerance.”
The Rockville Centre diocese was among those that signed on.
Rigorous screening
The diocese now conducts “rigorous psychological screening and training” for candidates to the priesthood and diaconate before and during their seminary training to try to prevent potential abusers from getting ordained in the first place, Fasano said.
Today, every priest, deacon, employee and volunteer in the diocese must undergo an initial background screening and then a follow-up review every five years if engaged in active ministry, Fasano said.
They must also take part in the “Protecting God’s Children Program” run by a company called Virtus in which they learn how to prevent child abuse and recognize signs of abuse, Fasano said. The program started in 2003 and continues to be offered daily throughout the diocese, including in Spanish. Those engaged in ministry with children must also take ongoing training by reading a short monthly bulletin.
Children in Catholic schools and religious education programs also now take part in an age-appropriate Virtus program.
Under guidelines established in 2003, clergy, employees and volunteers cannot be alone with a minor. Pastoral counseling and meetings “should be conducted during regular office hours and in professional settings, which should include offices with some open visibility, such as windows in office doors,” Fasano said in a statement.
To ensure parishes, employees and clergy adhere to the guidelines, the diocese established an Office for the Protection of Children and Young People. It performs on-site audits and works with trained Safe Environment Coordinators in each parish, Fasano said.
He acknowledged that preventing child sex abuse “demands constant vigilance” but said that “the Diocese is committed to it.”
Debate over Diocese reforms
Some Catholics on Long Island are still skeptical. Pat McDonough, who worked for the diocese for 30 years in posts including teacher and parish director of religious education, said that “programs created to protect children were nothing more than smoke and mirrors. It has always been about protecting the clergy and the assets of the institution.”
But others say the church has made progress.
Rick Hinshaw, a former editor of The Long Island Catholic, the diocese’s now-defunct weekly newspaper, said he had to take the Virtus training, and found it “very worthwhile.”
Employees were taught to look for warning signs of possible abuse such as a child becoming anxious or being reluctant to be in a certain adult’s presence, he said. They also learned to be alert for adults who were inappropriately touching children or inappropriately giving gifts, or who were manipulating situations to be alone with a child.
“It was made clear to us if you see these kinds of red flags, report them to the immediate authorities,” Hinshaw said.
“It’s very understandable that survivors of abuse would have a hard time crediting the church for anything then or since, because they were not protected, and the feeling of that betrayal is in many cases never going to leave them,” he added. “But looking at it objectively I think we can see that the church nationwide, but certainly in our diocese, has really been making and continues to make a strong effort to protect children.”
Others said any steps the diocese has taken were because it had to, given the overwhelming public outrage over the scandal, and that it has done only the minimal.
“The church has only responded when outside influences have forced a response,” said the Rev. Gerard McGlone, a Jesuit Catholic priest, psychologist and expert on clergy sex abuse who works at the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. “This was not something initiated. It was not the church recognizing its sins and then lamenting” them.
McKiernan said: “I do think there’s been a significant improvement, and I don’t think it’s out of the kindness of their hearts. They were compelled to do this because survivors were courageous enough to come forward and because” the media exposed the scandal.
McGlone, himself a clergy sex abuse survivor, said there are signs the church — and the Diocese of Rockville Centre — have taken the scandal seriously. The bishops conference has commissioned three major studies over the past two decades from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan examining why priests abuse children and what can be done about it.
Marci Hamilton, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of the nonprofit Child USA, which fights to protect children, said she gives the Diocese of Rockville Centre credit for steps such as mandatory reporting of allegations to law enforcement and Virtus training.
While her group has not studied Rockville Centre, she suspects it still needs to do more. Her group conducted a study of 32 Catholic archdioceses in the country and found that none scored above 50% on a policy analysis test. The test evaluates eight areas, such as background screening, whistleblower protection and victims’ rights.
“Every organization is doing something right basically. But the question is, have they filled out all of eight domains?” she said. “None of them have all the policies that they need to have a safe space for children.”
“They’re very eager to move on,” she added. “They’re very eager to say, ‘We are now safe for children. Of course we have done everything.’ But they haven’t.”
Rockville Centre could undergo the analysis if it wants, she said. Fasano said the diocese is not familiar with the testing tool but is open to considering it.
McKiernan said it is hard to judge how well Rockville Centre has done in part because it is not very transparent. Its list of accused clergy, for instance, is hard to find on its website, and is not complete, he said.
Fasano said the diocese is working to put its list in a more accessible spot, along with Bishop John Barres’ apology letter to survivors and other related materials.
McGlone said that while dioceses such as Rockville Centre have taken steps to protect children, it and the Catholic Church in general have failed to address the systemic causes of the problem. They include the formation of priests in seminaries and “clericalism,” a system that places priests on a pedestal.
“The church has a great story to tell but the story also has its limitations,” he said. “I don’t think the response has been sufficient enough. We’ve done good things, but we have so much more to do.”
Bart Jones has covered religion, immigration and major breaking news at Newsday since 2000. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela, he is the author of “HUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.”