BishopAccountability.org
	Audit: Archdiocese in Compliance on Child Protection Charter By Denise Lavoie The Associated Press, carried in Milford Daily News March 22, 2006 http://www.milforddailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=88504 Boston (AP) — An independent audit of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston shows it is in compliance on 16 out of 17 provisions of a national charter for protecting children, the archdiocese announced Tuesday. The archdiocese said that a 2005 audit shows it is complying with requirements to do thorough criminal background checks on all priests and other church personnel, to guarantee effective reporting and responses to allegations of sexual abuse, and to promote healing for survivors and others hurt by clergy sexual abuse. But the audit conducted by the Boston-based Gavin Group found the archdiocese has not complied with a requirement to complete "safe environment" training, a curriculum which teaches children and adults to recognize and report signs of sexual abuse. The archdiocese said that it has completed the training for adults and for approximately 119,000 children, but it has not yet given training to approximately 90,000 children in religious education classes and parochial schools. The Gavin Group was hired by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to audit dioceses across the county on compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the policy adopted by the bishops in 2002. A summary of the national audit is expected to be released later this month by the bishops' conference. Archbishop Sean O'Malley, who is in Rome this week awaiting his installation as a cardinal, in a written statement said that anything short of full compliance with the child protection policy is "unacceptable." "While these results demonstrate that much has been accomplished, they also reveal that more must be done in order to live up to our commitment and responsibility," he said. "On behalf of the Archdiocese, I acknowledge our deficiency and renew our pledge to doing all that is possible to create safe environments in our churches and schools and to continuing to provide support to survivors and all people who have suffered as a result of clergy sexual abuse," he said. The Rev. John Connolly, special assistant to the archbishop, said the archdiocese's effort to complete the safe environment training in 2005 was slowed by the closings of more than 60 parishes. It was also difficult to fit the training into one-hour-per-week religious education classes, said Connolly. "It's obviously a massive undertaking to train this many kids," Connolly said in an interview. "We've now modeled a number of ways that certain parishes have creatively implemented this into their religious education classes." Ray Joyce, executive director of Voice of the Faithful, a reform group founded after the clergy abuse scandal, criticized the archdiocese's failure to complete the training."Our church leaders can do better than that," he said. The group also has called on the archdiocese to release the names of priests "credibly accused" of sexual abuse. David Clohessy, national director for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he was skeptical about the audit results. "It's essentially a survey, not an audit," Clohessy said. "They rely almost strictly on self reports by the same chancery officials who fought tooth and nail to keep all this covered up for decades," he said. Connolly said O'Malley decided to have the Gavin Group do a full audit of the archdiocese, even though dioceses, including Boston, who were found to be in compliance during the first audit in 2003 were given the option of doing a self audit in subsequent years. The Gavin Group auditors did on-site work with full access to back-up documentation, spot checks, and discussions with abuse survivors, pastors and Catholic school principals in the archdiocese, said archdiocese spokeswoman Kelly Lynch. The clergy sex abuse crisis exploded in Boston in 2002, when internal church documents revealed that priests who had been accused of abusing children were shuffled from parish to parish. The scandal led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law as archbishop in December 2002. Editor's Note: Denise Lavoie is a Boston-based reporter covering the courts and legal issues. She can be reached at dlavoie(at)ap.org
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.