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Audit: Church makes progress fighting sex abuse

Bishop Wilton D. Gregory:
Bishop Wilton D. Gregory: "We bishops are keeping our word."

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Wilton D. Gregory
Roman Catholic Church
Religion and Belief
Boston (Massachusetts)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An audit of the Roman Catholic Church's response to the problem of sex abuse by priests indicated solid progress, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said.

Released Tuesday, the audit found that 90 percent of the 191 U.S. dioceses and Eastern Rite dioceses, called eparchies, are in full compliance with a 2002 charter adopted to deal with the issue and prevent future abuse.

Eastern Rite churches accept the pope's authority but follow an Eastern Orthodox liturgy.

Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said work remains but added, "We bishops are keeping our word," referring to the church's efforts to implement reforms.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection commissioned the audit and the Gavin Group of Boston conducted it. Church officials discussed the audit at a press conference Tuesday.

The audit reviewed the efforts made in each diocese and eparchy.

It found the Archdiocese of Boston, the epicenter of the sex abuse scandal, in compliance with the charter.

The Boston Archdiocese was commended for its outreach programming and efforts to ensure a "safe environment" training program.

Such a program requires a written code of conduct to be signed by employees and volunteers working with young people as well as training for adults on the issue of abuse, according to the Web site of the bishops' conference.

The audit said two recommendations have not been addressed completely -- making complaint procedures more readily available and developing a record-keeping system for documenting all allegations of abuse that have been brought to the attorney general's office.

Among the dioceses that have not fully complied are the archdioceses of New York, Anchorage, Alaska, and Omaha, Nebraska, and 17 other dioceses and eparchies.

The New York archdiocese was found to be compliant with the charter except for completion of implementing the safe environment program.

Victims' groups are skeptical about the report. One official of the The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, raised questions about the breadth of the audit.

"We're not sure how the process worked because we were not involved. We believe the interviewers talked mostly with church officials," said Barbara Dorris, a leader of the St. Louis, Missouri, chapter of SNAP.

"They only interviewed survivors who came forward after June of 2002, they talked only with survivors not involved with litigation, and only victims hand-picked by the diocese. Obviously this means that the interviewers only heard from a small and skewed group."

But Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent in charge of the child protection office, said most of the nation's bishops have made "tremendous efforts" to comply with the charter.

"The areas in which the dioceses and eparchies were most successful in implementing the charter were in selecting competent victims' assistance coordinators, establishing diocesan review boards and reporting cases of abuse to civil authorities, and not entering into confidentiality agreements unless asked to by the victims," McChesney said.

She said the areas in which the dioceses and eparchies seemed to have the most difficulty were in "conducting meetings with victims, survivors and their families; in identifying and implementing safe environment training programs; and in establishing codes of conduct for those who have regular contact with youth."

She attributed the weaknesses to "providing outreach to victim survivors who are involved in litigation; the identification of suitable training programs and instructors; and, in many instances, limited personnel, resources or training."

The report makes several recommendations. They include establishing a mechanism to audit the participation of the 19,000 Catholic parishes in implementing the charter, setting up ways to measure safe environment programs and creating a long-term plan for accountability by the bishops' conference, McChesney said.

The audit requires future annual reports to list the number of sex abuse allegations and number of actions taken against personnel, she said.

William Gavin, president of the Gavin Group, said the audit offers a national profile of the church's efforts.

"One hundred and thirty-one instructions [and] 297 recommendations were issued," Gavin said. "At the time all of the information was sent to printing, 157 of the 191 dioceses and eparchies had addressed all outstanding recommendations and instructions. Thirty-four dioceses and eparchies still had instructions and recommendations in the process of remediation."


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