Conference Helps Clergy Handle Child Abuse Cases

In a reflection of the religious community’s concern about the frequency of child abuse, more than 150 clergy gathered at Children’s Hospital of Orange County Tuesday to learn how to handle cases of suspected abuse within their congregations.

“I think for a long time, the religious institutions have been a part of the problem, because we were convinced that it (abuse) didn’t exist in our congregations,” said Rabbi Bradley Artson of Congregation Eilat in Mission Viejo, one of the panelists at the seminar sponsored by the Child Abuse Prevention Council of Orange County.

“For a lot of the clergy, this will be the first time we seriously think about the fact that our silence ends up working on the side of the molester,” he added. “Hopefully, today, we will get the tools to break that silence.”

Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist and other clergy joined Artson and other Jewish leaders. They were given a crash course on the complex workings of Orange County’s child-abuse prevention network and provided with dozens of contacts to call for further guidance.

Organizers said they held a conference solely for religious leaders because the clergy often hear about suspected abuse from parishioners but are generally unsure how to use official channels to respond.

Orange County has experienced an alarming increase in the number of reported cases of child abuse in recent years. The county’s Social Services Agency investigated 36,000 complaints in 1993, a 28% increase over the 25,850 in 1989.

The agency categorizes abuse as physical and sexual, emotional, general neglect and severe neglect. But in many instances, children are victims of more than one kind of mistreatment.

In March, the Orange County Grand Jury reported that one-fourth of the callers to the county’s 24-hour child-abuse hot line last year never got through. Most, according to the report, hung up in frustration when they got busy signals or were put on hold for as long as 40 minutes.

In an effort to reduce the number of lost calls, registry officials enacted a variety of measures, including increasing the number of hot-line operators.

In recent years, there also have been several widely publicized allegations of abuse involving members of the clergy.

Last year, the Diocese of Orange suspended Father Richard T. Coughlin after five men alleged that he molested them as youths more than a decade ago. Coughlin has denied any wrongdoing in the case. The diocese has also settled at least three lawsuits since 1988 filed by people who claim to have been molested.

Gene Howard, director of Children’s Services, which oversees the hot line, said Tuesday he was encouraged by the large turnout for the conference, “Orange County’s Religious Community Response to Child Abuse: Prevention and Intervention.”

“I’m hoping that there will be some heightened awareness of the seriousness of some of the child abuse cases,” said Howard, one of the panelists. “Hopefully, they (church leaders) will feel more comfortable about reporting abuse. . .”

During the daylong conference, attendees were given vignettes based upon cases of actual abuse and asked how they would handle the situation. In one case, Mrs. Jones, a church member, confides in her minister about her troubled marriage and her defiant 15-year-old daughter.

At the end of the 1 1/2-hour session, she tells the minister that at least things were improving because her husband had promised to stop seeking sexual gratification through their oldest daughter.

Some church leaders expressed concern that disclosing information given to them in confidence might compromise their relationships with parishioners.

But panelists stressed that the requirement that a clergy member keep a parishioner’s confidence applies only to limited situations such as confession. Officials are free to report any information about suspected child abuse that they glean through other channels.

But equally important, says the Rev. Bill Peterson, religious leaders must make it clear from the pulpit that harsh physical punishment in the name of disciplining a child is unacceptable.

“Some people think that the Bible justifies it,” said Peterson, pastor at the Congregational Church of Fullerton. “But we need to remind them that physically abusing children is not a tenet of religious faith.”