BishopAccountability.org
	Fresno Diocese Complies with Policy on Youths By Doug Hoagland Fresno Bee [Fresno CA] March 10, 2005 A national Catholic group charged with addressing the clergy sexual abuse crisis says the Diocese of Fresno is complying after all with a new nationwide policy to protect children. But only a month ago, the Office of Child & Youth Protection was reporting a different story. The group reported in February that the Fresno diocese was one of four in the United States that wasn't fully meeting compliance requirements. But after further review and talks with Fresno officials, the group said the diocese's main problem was getting key information in on time. The issue was, and continues to be, the Fresno diocese's competence in relaying information about clergy and volunteers working with children to the Office of Child & Youth Protection in Washington. The diocese did not make information about clergy and volunteers available in "a useful or satisfactory way" before a Dec. 31 deadline, said Sheila Kelly, interim director of the office. Added Kelly: "If the information that they had, had been provided to the auditors by December 31, they would have been found to be in compliance." Kelly said she has no idea why the information was not shared. "I think that's the question the diocese needs to respond to," she said. "I don't know what the circumstances were that created the gap in information." Jesse Avila, director of communication and chancellor for the diocese, doesn't agree there was an information gap, but said: "I do agree there was a lack of clarity in the information that was provided by the deadline." He said, for example, the Office of Child & Youth Protection wanted to know when all clergy would be trained to recognize and report child abuse. The diocese did not provide the information because it had done so before and didn't believe it was necessary to repeat it. The clergy sexual abuse crisis began in 2002 when hundreds of alleged victims came forward to say priests had abused them when they were children. America's Catholic bishops agreed to take new steps to safeguard children, and one of their solutions was to start the Office of Child & Youth Protection. Since 2002, the office has issued two reports assessing how the nation's 195 dioceses handle accusations of clergy sexual abuse and what steps dioceses are taking to prevent future abuse. The second report, which said the Fresno diocese was not fully complying, came out in mid-February. "We learned about the inaccurate conclusions too late to correct the body of the report," Bishop John T. Steinbock of the Fresno diocese said in a Feb. 28 letter to Valley Catholics. But "information clarifying our compliance" was added to the report, Steinbock said. The information showed that as of Jan. 12: 3,665 volunteers have contact with children and young people and 3,665 have had background checks. The diocese gets background checks through the state Department of Justice, which screens volunteers' fingerprints. Volunteers could be catechism teachers, youth ministers or choir directors. 1,488 volunteers had been trained about child abuse. Bishops required that all volunteers be trained. 135 out of 149 active clergy have been trained about child abuse. Training for clergy and volunteers is scheduled to be completed no later than May 1. Steinbock said in his Feb. 28 letter that "miscommunication" between the diocese and auditors for the Office of Child & Youth Protection led to the noncompliance tag. The Diocese of Fresno serves a Catholic population of 581,000 in Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties.
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