After three years of auditing dioceses to see if they have developed mandated programs to prevent child sex abuse, church officials now are looking to judge whether these programs are taking root.
This re-evaluation involves the thorny issue of whether future auditors should be able to see clergy personnel files given right-to-privacy limitations to access in church and civil law. Experts said this often boils down to balancing the right to privacy with the right of the public to information for the common good.
It also raises the practical questions:
---How do you judge if pastors and Catholics in the pew know what to do if someone comes forward with an allegation?
---How do you know if a child can handle himself or herself if approached by an abuser?
"While the audit process records the presence of structures, policies and programs, it has not examined the effectiveness of these measures," said Patricia O'Donnell Ewers, head of the National Review Board established by the bishops as an independent monitor of how their policies are implemented.
At a March 30 news conference to present the 2005 audit report, Ewers called for "a careful reassessment and reworking of the audit process."
For William Gavin, head of the Gavin Group that has done the three audits, this involves examining what is going on at the parish level and having access to clergy personnel files.
"The parish is where the rubber meets the road," he told Catholic News Service. Until now, the audits have looked at the chancery office and the programs and materials that they have developed, he said.
Teresa Kettelkamp, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection, said future audits could include visits to selected parishes and more interviews with victims willing to discuss how they were treated by diocesan officials.
"We need to ask parishioners and pastors: 'If someone comes to you and says he was abused, who do you tell them to call?'" Kettelkamp told CNS.
Children can be taught not to go away with strangers, she said. But they are also taught other things such as being kind and helpful, she said.
"Some abusers approach a child with a photo of a dog and ask the child to 'help me find my dog,'" she said.
Auditors should find out if a child knows that in such a situation he or she has the option not to help the stranger look for the dog, she said.
Auditors could also check if the parish church has user-friendly posters and pamphlets in prominent places with information about sex abuse programs and contact information for victims, she said.
How victims are treated goes beyond providing therapy and professional help, said Kettelkamp.
It would be helpful to know if diocesan officials "touch base with victims to see how they are doing," she said.
Gavin said auditors need access to personnel files to trace how sex abuse cases are handled. Dioceses also have to consolidate files to avoid having different levels of files, he said.
Gavin suggested that auditors have the same access to files that Defenbaugh and Associates had in their recent investigation of how the Chicago Archdiocese handled the cases of two priests who remained in ministry while under investigation in child sex abuse cases. One of the priests abused again.
Gavin said Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George opened the necessary archives to the Defenbaugh investigation.
The Chicago investigation also showed that there were several levels of personnel files with not all the levels containing relevant information, he said.
"I don't need to see a file that says the priest gives bad Sunday homilies," he said.
Regarding legal issues in seeing files, Gavin, a former FBI agent, said that "if Father Bob abuses little Bob little Bob has more rights than Father Bob."
Msgr. Ronny Jenkins, who teaches canon law at The Catholic University of America and is associate general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said church and civil law would indicate that any access to personnel files would have to be on a case-by-case basis.
"Is it fair and legal for the goal of protection of privacy to be waived to achieve the goal of protecting children in this case?" he said.
Under church law a "compelling interest for the public good" would have to be shown for access to personnel files, said Msgr. Jenkins.
Regarding different levels of personnel files, canon law establishes that each diocese is to have a "secret archive" in addition to the regular personnel files. The secret files contain information about "criminal cases in matters of morals," said Canon 489 of the church's Code of Canon Law.
Msgr. Jenkins said the term "secret archive" does not mean that there can be no outside access to these files, only that these files are more restricted.
Mark E. Chopko, USCCB general counsel, said that under civil law there is also the issue that clergy personnel files could contain the names of victims who requested confidentiality.
"If a victim doesn't want his identity known, then file access would have to be controlled," he told CNS. ---CNS |