Preventing abuse

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LittleFlower

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Hi everyone,

The other thread is being slightly overrun with suggestions on how to prevent abuse, and I thought it would be good to create a seperate topic where everyone can debate on how to successfully mitigate and prevent abuse.

Some suggestions have been:
  • Better vetting of seminary candidates
  • Working with Children Checks
  • Clear boundaries between religious, priests, teachers
  • Children understanding what makes them comfortable and uncomfortable
Some more “hot” suggestions have been:
  • No more celibacy for priests
  • Allowing priests to marry
How are your church communities preventing abuse? 🙂
 
I think the last 2 bullets could he condensed into 1… just sayin.
 
Just listing them as they occurred to me. :woman_shrugging:t2:
 
Have you read the US Report?

Studies are overwhelming that across the board more abuse of adolescents is done by non-celibate folks.

Safe environment programs are in place at every Diocese and Parish in the US.

This is one of the popular programs

VIRTUS® Online?
 
I’m not sure you can stop it. Some people have disordered, deranged, degenerate, disgusting urges. There’s no way to prevent them from slipping through the cracks in any sector.
 
Ending priestly celibacy, on its own, is not likely to help. There are plenty of married men who prey on children, including Jerry Sandusky of Penn State, and many fathers and stepfathers who prey on their own children, their children’s friends, or children in the extended family.

it was thought in the past that celibacy might tend to attract priests with various sexual perversions because they joined the priesthood thinking that the requirement for celibacy would help keep their perversions under control, but then later succumbed to temptation. This issue can be addressed with better screening of priest candidates and it’s my understanding in USA that they already have such screening in place.
 
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Not sure how ending celibacy would help, considering the problem is the lack of celibacy.
 
LittleFlower said:
Children understanding what makes them comfortable and uncomfortable
Click to expand...
Little things, parents teaching kids the proper names for body parts empowers the kids to speak out with clarity IF something happens and also to be clear about what parts are private.

Teaching kids that it is their right to say no, to run away, that they will never be punished for talking about things.

Parents learning what grooming behavior looks like.

In this report to the US Congress: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/nis4_report_congress_full_pdf_jan2010.pdf

"Children living with their married biological parents universally had the
lowest rate, whereas those living with a single parent who had a cohabiting partner in the
household had the highest rate in all maltreatment categories. "
 
I have a friend, another CAFer, who told me about a friend he met online that is exclusively attracted to children. I’ve never spoken to this guy, so I’m just going off second-hand. He says that this guy lives alone and very seldomly leaves the house to avoid going anywhere where there might be children. He says that he has never hurt a child and does everything that he can to avoid it. He says that he can’t share his struggles with anyone except online because people would automatically assume that he has been with a kid. He can’t see a therapist either because he would be reported and his life ruined.

I’m wondering how many people are like that who are exclusively attracted to children, but want to lead moral lives. There needs to be help for those folks.
 
I have been through Virtus and it is a great program. But I wouldn’t say safe environment programs are truly in place in every diocese and parish. I have moved around a lot for work and in the last six parises I’ve been in, only one really took it seriously. I think it would be more realistic to say, “every diocese and parish has a safe environment program available to them.”

I think the #1 thing the Church could do to prevent abuse is to make full use of Virtus. It’s that good. Including:
  • Absolutely ensure that everyone in a position of responsibility at every parish go through the full Virtus program.
  • Ensure that every member of the clergy goes through Virtus for Religious Orders.
  • Make sure every minor in the parish goes through the Touching Safety Program for Children
  • Subsidize the training part of Virtus for anyone in any parish who wants to take it whether they are in a position of responsibility or not.
  • Make it clear at every parish that Virtus guidelines are fully supported there and ask for the congregation’'s help. Brief the congregation on Virtus guidelines and repeat that in the bulletins.
  • Every parish should have Virtus audits done regularly.
If everyone followed those guidelines, abuse would be very hard to do, and very hard to get away with.
 
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When we do the Vitrus training they dispel the myth that child sexual abuse is caused by celibacy.
Married priests wouldn’t help anything in that arena.
 
While there are a lot of government institutions that would like to see the “seal of confession” go away so they can bug the confessionals and subpoena the priests, I’m pretty sure the experts on child sexual abuse are going to all smack down the myth that celibacy somehow causes men to molest children. It’s completely unsupported by evidence.
 
There is a website, it is a Protestant website, and the numbers are out of date, but it gives the abuse numbers for different Protestant denominations. And the two highest, are Episcopalians and Baptists. They even say straight up, we can’t pretend like this is only a Catholic problem.
 
Catholics are just the biggest and most visible target. We also have a lot more centralized authority over which priests get sent where than some (not all) of the Protestant denominations, so when the Church started just moving the problem priests to another parish or diocese instead of turning them in to the cops, that’s where the problems started. The Church also has deep pockets for big splashy lawsuits.
 
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I agree with the first two points, the third and fourth may need to be carefully worded and studied. The last two points are irrelevant and therefore I am not in favor of them.

Whatever actions we are taking now hopefully will address the problem of sexual abuse and thereafter the situation will slowly right itself. Then we can have less of those rules remembering that priests are God’s ordained ministers after all.
 
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Current efforts in the US seem to have improved things a great deal.

I am disappointed – well, actually shocked – that the bishops in other countries including Australia did not follow suit. Were they unaware? Or did they think they were so much different?

Returning to the question of the Original Post, my suggestion would be to adapt the US program, maybe even improve upon it.
 
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We have mandatory Virtus/Safe Environment training in my Archdiocese for everyone who works/volunteers in any capacity with the Archdiocese.
 
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Around age 10, I realized Priests were every bit as human as us. The Priest at my Parish suffered from depression and heart problems and would often lash out at parishioners. It didn’t matter if they were kids or adults. My grandfather always said, “Remember, a priest is still an imperfect man”. I respected the Priests I encountered but when abuse cases started piling up it didn’t affect my Faith. No one is beyond reproach and nobody can be trusted 100%. You have sheep who go astray and you have wolves in sheeps clothing.
 
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