Florida Catholic | Keeping Our Promise Of A Safe Environment

Keeping our promise of a safe environment

Archdiocese once again is found to be in compliance with bishops’ charter on protecting children from sexual abuse.

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC MIAMI BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 04.04.08

Where To Turn

Archdiocese of Miami Safe Environment program:

• Director: Mary Ross Agosta

• Virtus training coordinator: Jan Rayburn, 305-762-1250

• Victim assistance coordinator: Patricia Stockton, 1-866-80-ABUSE (1-866-802-2873)

• Background check coordinators: Myriam Leinweber, 305-762-1057, or mleinweber@theadom.org; Vicky Carpio, 305-762-1059, or mcarpio@theadom.org

MIAMI | During the past five years, more than 26,000 Catholics in south Florida have been fingerprinted and more than 20,000 have undergone training as part of the Archdiocese of Miami’s efforts at “Protecting God’s Children.”

Those statistics, combined with data on how the archdiocese responds to victims of sexual abuse when they come forward — and how it deals with priests who have been accused — form the basis for an annual audit conducted in every Catholic diocese in the United States by the independent Gavin Group.

For the fourth year in a row, the auditors — most of them former FBI agents — found that the archdiocese is in full compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults.

The U.S. bishops bound themselves to that charter in June 2002 after a flurry of newspaper articles, lawsuits and scandals regarding the sexual abuse of children by priests — most of them dating back 20 or 30 years.

“The Catholic Church today is probably the most committed organization, institution, corporation, school system, whatever, to providing a safe environment for our children,” said Mary Ross Agosta, archdiocesan director of communications and director of the Safe Environment program. “Because never again does the church want to go through what we’ve gone through, and these are the pieces that are in place to make sure of that.”

Agosta said she expected the archdiocese to be in compliance, but was pleasantly surprised when the auditors singled out for praise the amount of information available to the public on the archdiocesan Web site, www.miamiarch.org.

“One of the things they’re really very impressed with is the report that we do about once every 12, 14, 15 months, updating the number of cases that have been brought forth, the number of victims, the moneys that have been spent on all aspects of insurance and even moneys that have been spent on lawsuits — not just sexual abuse lawsuits, but other lawsuits,” Agosta said.

“We put all that out there,” she added, because Archbishop John C. Favalora is totally committed to transparency and openness on this issue.

“So, really, what we’re telling the auditors in the audit is a lot of information that has already been placed on our Web site and sent out to people, and we’re very open and honest about that,” Agosta said.

“There are a set of criteria that were established as to how our institutions and agencies need to regulate themselves vis a vis this situation, and the audit comes in to check to see if it has been done,” said Archbishop Favalora.

“We’re being very intense about this. I’ve certainly encouraged everyone to make sure that we are in compliance,” the archbishop added. “This is a huge undertaking. It’s very time-consuming, it’s very costly, but it’s important for us. We’re taking that charter seriously.”

One of the charter requirements is that everybody who has access to children in a diocese — be they clergy, religious or laity, employees or volunteers — must be fingerprinted and undergo a criminal background check at both the state and national levels.

Since the charter was approved, the archdiocese has fingerprinted nearly 26,000 people. The fingerprints are run again every five years. The archdiocese uses the Jessica Lunsford Act as the criteria for deciding who can be employed, either as a paid worker or a volunteer.

“If you’ve been convicted of a crime that’s on that list, you will not work for the church,” Agosta said.

As of March 10, 2008, the archdiocese also began picking up the cost of the fingerprinting.

“The archdiocese feels that this is imperative, that everybody feel that they can volunteer at the church. We don’t want the cost of (fingerprinting) to be prohibitive,” Agosta said.

The same thing is true of Virtus and Teaching Touching Safety, programs aimed at adults and children, respectively. The goal of these programs is to train people to spot the signs of potential abusers in order to deny them opportunities to hurt children. Both of the programs are offered free at the parish and school levels.

“We know that the sexual abuse of a minor is not just a church issue,” Agosta said. “It’s not to deflect from what the church has experienced these last six years. But part of our Safe Environment program is proactive. So we are training parents as well as children in the schools on what to look for, because as a parent, as a teacher, you can’t keep your eye on your children all the time.”

“One of the safest places our children can be right now is in a Catholic school or entity,” Archbishop Favalora said. “But we have to be realistic,” just as, even after the measures enacted after Sept. 11, the United States remains vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

“You’re never going to be able to completely have the kind of security that you would like. There are ways that people can get around the system. But you can do as much as you can,” the archbishop said, to make sure that nothing happens.

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