Archdiocese Hires Investigator Following I-Team Report, WCPO [Cincinnati OH], May 17, 2006

Archdiocese Hires Investigator Following I-Team Report

WCPO [Cincinnati OH]
May 17, 2006

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2006/local/05/17/iteam.html

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has hired an investigator to look into issues raised by Channel 9's I-Team in a Sunday night report.

In the report, Alex Henties, an ex-convict hired to run background checks on Archdiocese workers, claims Archdiocese official Vince Frasher has "about 2,200 nude photos" of Henties.

Henties, who has a long criminal record involving drug, domestic violence and theft charges, once said, "[Frasher] has screwed me up time and time again... he sold me time and time again. There's a sick man."

Alex Henties, suspect
Photo by The WCPO/WCPO.com

Also, Henties' father and brother told the I-Team that Frasher sexually abused Henties when he was young.

The Archdiocese says it has a hand-written letter from Henties, dated April 28, 2006, which states "I have never been abused in such a way as this and have never been abused by Vince what so ever or at all."

Dan Andriacco, spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Cinti.
Photo by The WCPO/WCPO.com

The Archdiocese has hired a private investigator to probe further, according to a news release e-mailed Wednesday afternoon.

Henties was fired from the Archdiocese nine months ago, sources told the I-Team.

Scene from I-Team report
Photo by The WCPO/WCPO.com

He's currently in prison serving a two-year sentence for cocaine charges and fleeing from police after a January pursuit that ended in Blue Ash.

Archdiocese calms identity theft fears

According to the I-Team report, computers Henties used at the Archdiocese were stolen and then pawned by Henties' girlfriend.

That posed the risk of identity theft due to the nature of the information contained on the machines, the I-Team reported.

The Archdiocese says it has not received any reports of identity theft.

Also, in this April 16th letter to the Archdiocese, Jeffrey Rossi of the Ohio Attorney General's office says there is no need to worry:

"The workstations were designed to provide remote transmission of fingerprints and demographic data to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. The data is encrypted by the workstation software during this process. The equipment used by WebCheck agencies, such as the Archdiocese, is not designed to store information on the individuals who participate in the background check process."

The Archdiocese says it is also hiring an independent security consultant to evaluate the security of the background check procedures.

Archdiocese press release

Below is the full text of the news release sent to media Wednesday afternoon.

ARCHDIOCESE TO INVESTIGATE COMMENTS, EVALUATE SECURITY

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has launched an investigation of broadcast comments about an employee and also plans to seek an independent evaluation of identity security in its background check program for volunteers and employees who work with children.

A Cincinnati television station reported on Sunday that the father and brother of fired employee Alex Henties told the station that Vince Frasher, archdiocesan personnel director and Henties' former boss, had sexually abused Henties "when he was young."

On the other hand, the Archdiocese has a copy of a hand-written letter from Henties, dated April 28, 2006, in which he states, "I have never been abused in such a way as this and have never been abused by Vince what so ever or at all." Nevertheless, this charge is so serious that the Archdiocese has retained a private investigator to probe further. In addition, the TV station's report was sent to the Hamilton County prosecutor's office on Monday.

Vince Frasher is on a vacation that has been scheduled since January.

Responding to the dismay and anger of local Catholics who are concerned that their identity security may have been endangered when they were fingerprinted by the Archdiocese, we intend to hire an independent security consultant evaluate the security of our background check procedures. Although the Archdiocese has never received a complaint of identity theft related to the three-year-old background check program, we wish to make sure the system is as secure as possible.

The theft of two laptop computers formerly used by the Archdiocese for fingerprinting and background checks does not pose a threat for personal identity theft, according to Attorney General Jim Petro's office. In an April 16 letter to the Archdiocese, Jeffrey A. Rossi, Deputy Superintendent of Identification in the Office of the Attorney General, wrote: "The workstations were designed to provide remote transmission of fingerprints and demographic data to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI &I). The data is encrypted by the workstation software during this process. The equipment used by WebCheck agencies, such as the Archdiocese, is not designed to store information on the individuals who participate in the background check process."

Contrary to a suggestion raised by the television report, the stolen computers were only used in the fingerprint program and are in no way related to the Archdiocese's announcement earlier this year that we were unable to confirm that several thousand volunteers who work with children had taken the required training in our Decree on Child Protection since 1993. As explained at the time, this was because of inconsistent record keeping in the parishes before these records were centralized.