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  Report Faults Dioceses Training

Cincinnati Post
April 12, 2007

http://news.kypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070412/NEWS01/704120361/1014/NEWS02

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati was one of only two American dioceses not in compliance with the Roman Catholic Church's national standards for prevention of sexual abuse, a new report finds.

The report, issued Wednesday on behalf of the National Review Board, the lay group the bishops created to implement their standards, showed that in 2006, only the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Diocese of Burlington in Vermont didn't fully comply with the standards.

Both dioceses needed to complete safe environment training for all volunteers who work with children, said William A. Gavin, president of the Massachusetts-based Gavin group, which did the audits.

Both dioceses had been very conscientious about working toward full compliance, Gavin said, and he expected they would reach that goal this year.

Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, said the archdiocese shouldn't be judged as lax on meeting the standards based on the report and stressed that no one who hasn't gone through the proper training works with children. Moreover, he said, that's been a policy of the archdiocese for 14 years, long before the U.S. bishops created their standards.

But the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests faulted the archdiocese for not moving quickly enough.

"Training church staff to spot signs of abuse is a simple but important process," Outreach Director Barbara Dorris said. "There's really no excuse for foot-dragging on this."

Andriacco said that all staff, including priests, deacons and educators, have had the training.

Last year, there were more than 10,000 volunteers that the archdiocese couldn't show had had the training, but this year there are only about 3,000, he said.

One reason the archdiocese can't show all the volunteers have had the training is that many took it years ago, before the archdiocese had centralized records, he said.

"We started to do this before most dioceses did," he said. "As of last year, we had 5,000 names on written records that we couldn't read."

"We have a higher standard for compliance than the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops," he said. "We don't say a parish is compliant unless we have the records."

Only 29 dioceses and eparchies, out of 195 in the United States, were audited last year.

 
 

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