Washington Post
January 6, 2004

Washington — Close to 90 percent of the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States have complied with the rules set by the nation’s bishops 18 months ago to prevent sexual abuse of children, auditors hired by the church reported Tuesday.

But 20 dioceses have not yet fulfilled instructions issued by the auditors to address specific shortcomings, such as failure to conduct “safe environment” training for children or delays in conducting criminal background checks on church employees.

The president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., hailed the report as evidence of “solid progress” toward ending the scandal that has rocked the church for two years. “I believe that these findings show that we bishops are keeping our word,” he said.

Victims’ groups voiced caution. They noted that the auditors did not have power to comb through personnel records or other church files. Rather, the teams of former FBI agents who fanned out across the country relied on interviews with church officials, prosecutors and small numbers of victims.

“In most audits, investigators can compel access to objective data — bank statements, legal documents and the like,” said Barbara A. Blaine, founder of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “In this case, the interviewers had to rely largely on subjective material that was given voluntarily, and given by essentially the same men who have, for decades, fought to keep the crimes of clergy concealed.”

The church spent about $1.8 million, or just under $10,000 per diocese, to conduct the audits in 191 of the 195 Latin-rite dioceses and Eastern-rite eparchies in the United States. The consulting contract was given to the Gavin Group, a Boston firm headed by a retired assistant director of the FBI, William Gavin. Of the 54 investigators he hired, 50 were former FBI agents.

Gavin said in an interview that he was confident that the people he hired “knew how to probe and ask questions, and keep asking questions, until they get real answers.” But he also said they were circumscribed by the voluntary nature of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the sex abuse policy adopted by the U.S. bishops in Dallas in June 2002.

“I performed within the four corners of that charter,” he said. “The whole thing was a voluntary process.”

Gavin said four dioceses were not audited. Two of them — St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and the Armenian Exarchate of New York — were skipped because of scheduling difficulties. An eparchy that was created in 2002 was exempted from the present round of audits, and the diocese of Davenport, Iowa, was dropped because its bishop insisted that an attorney for the diocese should be present during all interviews, including with victims and local prosecutors, Gavin said.

“That would not have been an independent audit,” Gavin said. “I’m not going to castigate them. But based on that, I just said we could not conduct a legitimate audit there.”

The central promise of the Dallas charter was that the bishops will permanently remove from ministry any priest or deacon who has ever sexually abused a child, no matter how long ago.

Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI official who is the first head of the church’s Office of Child and Youth Protection, said the audits indicated that the overwhelming majority of dioceses are complying with that “zero tolerance” policy.

Just one diocese — Cincinnati — was found in an initial visit by auditors last July to have kept priests in ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse. Five Cincinnati priests were removed from ministry before the completion of a follow-up “re-audit” in November, McChesney said.

Among the Dallas charter’s other provisions was a requirement that each diocese create a review board, composed primarily of lay people, to hear abuse allegations and make recommendations to the bishop.

It also called for dioceses to reach out to victims and offer them psychological counseling; pledged that church officials would report abuse allegations to civil authorities; urged dioceses to deal as openly with the public; and set up McChesney’s office and a national review board of prominent lay people to produce an annual report on implementation of the charter.

The audits are the backbone of that report, which was issued today in two parts: a 30-page summary and analysis, and a 388-page compilation of findings in each diocese. A more explosive study — aimed at determining how many priests have been accused of abuse, how many victims they have had and how much money the church has spent on abuse-related lawsuits — is scheduled for release Feb. 27.

McChesney said most dioceses have done a good job in setting up victims’ assistance coordinators, creating local review boards, reporting allegations to police and halting the practice of imposing secrecy agreements on legal settlements.

However, she said, many dioceses have lagged in other areas, such as holding meetings with victims and their families; training employees, parents and children in how to identify and report abuse; conducting criminal background checks and setting codes of conduct for church workers who are in regular contact with children.

All together, the auditors issued commendations for innovative procedures or exceptional transparency about the problem of sexual abuse to 129, or 68 percent, of the 191 dioceses.

Recommendations for improvement in particular areas were given to 125 dioceses, including some that received commendations in other areas.

Fifty-seven dioceses received instructions saying they had failed to comply with various aspects of the charter. All but 20 dioceses had addressed those instructions and brought themselves into compliance by the end of the audits, McChesney said.