The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released the 9th annual report of the National Review Board set up by the bishops to monitor compliance with the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" (the so-called Dallas Charter).Notably, the Board itself did not write the report; it was written for the Board by the Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection of the USCCB, which is the procedure set up by the bishops in the Charter itself.
The USCCB calls the report an "audit" which then can be characterized in the USCCB press release accompanying a link to the Report, by the headline - "Child Protection Audits Find Nearly All Dioceses Compliant."
The USCCB also supplied a preface, over the name of USCCB President, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
Cardinal Dolan tells the reader, among other things [emphasis added], "the majority of allegations [of priestly sexual abuse] are way in the past" and the church must "strive to the fullest to end the societal scourge of child sexual abuse."
Well, if USCCB and Cardinal Dolan's characterizations are correct that "nearly all" diocese are "compliant," and the allegations are "way in the past" and if the scourge of child sexual abuse is a "societal scourge" then the problem is set up to be spun in diocesan newspapers as both manageable and receding, like a bad dream. I predict this is exactly how the diocesan papers will spin the report; the bishop of each diocese is the publisher of the diocesan paper.
Let's not forget that the first chair of the USCCB National Review Board, former GOP governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating, resigned as Board Chair, saying the bishops acted like a “mafia.” Governor Keating added in his letter of resignation that his ‘mafia’ comments
“which some Bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate. I make no apology . . . . To resist Grand Jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church.”
Now, in 2012, is the Board under a more compliant, a more domesticated chair?
Apparently so.
The Charter permits the bishops to take over the entire sex abuse monitoring process. They have done so.
USCCB staff have conducted the surveys and have written the report itself, which the USCCB spins as an "audit" rather than, more accurately, as a report or a survey.
Why an audit and not a report?
Only an audit - unlike a report or survey - may be invoked as a standard, to which the vast majority of dioceses may be declared "complaint."
Worst of all, the USCCB places the clerical rape of children in the arms length context of a societal scourge, as Cardinal Dolan proclaims.
Reading past the preface and the USCCB headline, much data in the 2011 Report itself is not so sanguine as Cardinal Dolan's "way-in-the-past" preface.
- 594 new, credible claims of sexual abuse were made in 2011, up from 505 in 2010
- $144 million in settlements and costs were paid in 2011, down by $5.6 million paid out in 2010
- about 1/3 of the clergy accused in 2011 were not accused before
- most of the data collected was on the diocesan and not the parish level; only 24 dioceses (not including my own, Baltimore) "agreed to have the auditors conduct detailed interviews in parishes to determine Charter understanding and compliance at the parish level" (the 2011 Annual Report, p. 6).
This is depressing intelligence.
A vast majority of bishops declined to permit parishioners to be interviewed. This refusal points to the iron-clad control exercised by the hierarchy in the clerical abuse monitoring and reporting process.
Depriving the laity of input into the 2011 Report is a violation of the Charter. Article 10 stipulates:
Depriving the laity of input into the 2011 Report is a violation of the Charter. Article 10 stipulates:
"The whole Church, especially the laity, at both the diocesan and national levels, needs to be engaged in maintaining safe environments in the Church for children and young people."
Why would the bishops bar interviews of parishioners on the subject of the Church's compliance with the bishops' own self-proclaimed Charter standards?
There is only one plausible reason: the bishops cannot control parishioner input as they can chancery staff input. The solution: forbid parishioners to be interviewed.
Sad.
But predictable.
There are other, serious monitoring deficiencies, which are apparent:
Religious Order clergy, who are assigned to work in various dioceses are not subject to abuse training in the diocese and the Orders are not subject to the report requirements (Report, Chapter 6, unnumbered page one).
Priests assigned to various dioceses "for prayer or penance" are not monitored by the dioceses (Report, Chapter 6, unnumbered page one).
How in the world is this not seen as a gross violation of 'safe environment' standards?
Testimony from the current trial in Philadelphia suggests that a priest who is fixated on pornography, after once cut lose from his parish assignment (owing to a criminal conviction for possession of child porn), had to be sent somewhere. That somewhere was another parish, where he became an intolerable burden both to parishioners and clerical colleagues, who became aware of his continuing obsession with the sexuality of children.
Other shortcomings in seeing to the creation of 'safe environments' for children in the parishes include the failure of the Charter itself to spell out -
There are other, serious monitoring deficiencies, which are apparent:
Religious Order clergy, who are assigned to work in various dioceses are not subject to abuse training in the diocese and the Orders are not subject to the report requirements (Report, Chapter 6, unnumbered page one).
Priests assigned to various dioceses "for prayer or penance" are not monitored by the dioceses (Report, Chapter 6, unnumbered page one).
How in the world is this not seen as a gross violation of 'safe environment' standards?
Testimony from the current trial in Philadelphia suggests that a priest who is fixated on pornography, after once cut lose from his parish assignment (owing to a criminal conviction for possession of child porn), had to be sent somewhere. That somewhere was another parish, where he became an intolerable burden both to parishioners and clerical colleagues, who became aware of his continuing obsession with the sexuality of children.
Other shortcomings in seeing to the creation of 'safe environments' for children in the parishes include the failure of the Charter itself to spell out -
- where evidence of actual safe environment training data is to be kept, for showing to investigators
- that Order priests must be subject to safe environment training and supervision
- what should be done with identified abusers.
Here is probably the worst news of all:
The Report highlights that numbers of dioceses rely on public schools to conduct "safe environment" training, but without confirming that such training is actually taking place (Report, p. 22).
An anual report conducted by an independent Review Board, could be expected to identify those dioceses, which do not take the trouble to conduct "safe environment" training of the children of the parishes. This report contains no such information.
This casual reliance by bishops on public schools to alert and train young parishioners to the danger of clerical sexual predation is the strangest and the most worrying feature of the current compliance report.
A link to the Report:
Child Protection Audits Find Nearly All Dioceses Compliant