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	Catholic Bishops Undergo Another Audit By Rachel Zoll Associated Press, carried in Seattle Post-Intelligencer [United States] March 30, 2006 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Church_Abuse_Audits.html The nation's Roman Catholic bishops have undergone another audit to see if they are complying with the U.S. church's toughened sex abuse policy, though not all the dioceses have been visited by investigators. And critics say results of the audit, scheduled for release Thursday in Washington, D.C., are not a true measure of the bishops' commitment to their own policies. The bishops hired investigators to determine whether dioceses are implementing the national policy church leaders adopted in 2002 at the height of the clergy sex abuse scandal. But the auditors from the Gavin Group, a private firm led by a former FBI agent, were not asked to judge whether the programs are effective. Also, church leaders changed how the review was conducted. In the first two annual reviews, all 195 dioceses received an onsite visit. During the most recent review, dioceses that had been judged compliant two years in a row were allowed to fill out a questionnaire instead. "We're sort of getting into periods where we're checking the box and saying things are fine," said Sue Archibald, head of the victim advocacy group, The Linkup. "I think it's much too easy in that environment to slip back into old practices that led to abusive priests in ministry and children being put at risk." The most dramatic recent problem with compliance has been in Chicago, where Cardinal Francis George acknowledged that his archdiocese allowed a priest accused of child molesting to remain in ministry for months until he was criminally charged. The bishops' national discipline plan requires priests be removed after an initial, internal review of whether an allegation is credible. An outside investigation George commissioned this month found that many archdiocesan staff did not know what steps they should have taken in the case. George is vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In Spokane, Wash., Bishop William Skylstad, president of the conference, has been accused of sexually abusing a woman more than four decades ago when she was a child. Skylstad denies the claim, but the lay reform group Voice of the Faithful has called for him to step down while the case is under review. A spokesman for the bishops' conference has insisted that the nation's church leaders are doing everything possible to protect children. The 2002 abuse prevention policy requires dioceses to hire victim assistance coordinators, form review boards to help evaluate abuse claims, conduct background checks on staff and volunteers and teach children to protect themselves from predators. On Thursday, the bishops will also release data on new claims and costs related to the crisis and an update of a massive statistical analysis of abuse claims from 1950-2002 by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In 2004, dioceses received more than 1,000 new abuse claims, in addition to the 10,667 claims the John Jay report tallied. Diocesan costs from sex abuse cases since 1950, including known settlements with victims, have surpassed $1 billion. --- On the Net: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: http://www.usccb.org
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