90% of Dioceses Meet New Rules

By Larry B. Stammer and Richard Winton

Jan. 6, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

All but 10% of the nation’s 194 Roman Catholic dioceses have fully complied with rules and safeguards to prevent sexual abuse of minors by priests, the church’s watchdog office will report today in the aftermath of a scandal that has rocked the U.S. church for the last two years.

The much-anticipated report said that bishops have made significant progress in implementing “zero tolerance” regulations as required under a national church charter on sexual abuse adopted in June 2002.

But the document, a copy of which was obtained by The Times in advance of its official release in Washington, declared that 20 Catholic dioceses and Eastern Rite Catholic districts, all outside of California, had not made enough changes, and urged the nation’s bishops to take corrective action there.

In most cases, those 20 dioceses, including Anchorage, Honolulu, Omaha and New York, had not established formal codes of conduct, not developed classes for parents on how to spot signs of sexual abuse, or not properly started background checks for priests and other church employees, according to the report.

Leaders of sexual abuse victims’ support groups said they were skeptical about what they believed would be the report’s mainly upbeat conclusions, although they had not yet seen it.

At a news conference Monday in Los Angeles and in a statement issued in St. Louis, leaders of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests alleged that the audit would be “fundamentally flawed.” They said few victims were interviewed by auditors.

The audit was conducted by 54 investigators -- many of them former FBI agents -- employed by the Gavin Group Inc. of Boston, headed by retired FBI official William Gavin. Undertaken at a cost to the church of $1.8 million, the audits were carried out primarily from June 23 to Oct. 31.

A separate investigation is seeking to determine the number of sexual abuse cases and abusive clergy around the country since 1950. Those results, which could be far more explosive as the church seeks to restore its credibility, are scheduled to be announced next month by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

This week’s report called for annual audits of the nation’s Catholic dioceses and their similar Eastern Rite jurisdictions, known as eparchies, and a yearly up-to-date accounting of the number of priests and deacons accused of sexually molesting minors. It also called for greater efforts by the church to track down and help bring to justice priests who have fled after accusations of sexual abuse.

“Neither this audit process nor the full and complete implementation of the charter will provide a total guarantee that there will never be another case of child or youth sexual abuse committed by a member of the Catholic clergy,” the report states. “However, the continuous efforts of bishops, eparches, clergy, religious, and the laity to address this problem will foster a greater degree of confidence that children and young people will be safe and secure in environments in the Catholic Church of the United States.”

Katheen McChesney, executive director of the national Catholic Church’s Office of Child and Youth Protection and a former high-ranking FBI official, said in a letter accompanying the report that bishops had done much since the charter was adopted in Dallas. But she served notice that “there are many ways to more effectively and efficiently implement the charter.”

Victims and prosecutors, however, said the report would give an unmerited positive impression at a time when many lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests are awaiting trials.

“We have one simple question: Where is the truth? Every diocese was asked to report on sexual abuse. Wouldn’t it make sense to ask us, the victims, to help create and augment the data the auditors are submitting to the council of bishops? Only three of us were included,” Joelle Casteix, a former member of a board that reviewed sexual abuse cases in the Orange County diocese, told reporters at a news conference outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.

The report, while not specifying how many victims were interviewed, urged that more be involved in the reforms in the future. The charter forbids a diocese to transfer an abusive priest to another diocese. But the report said auditors were unable to view personnel files to verify that every diocese was following that mandate. Instead, auditors “relied primarily on the information provided by the diocese/eparchy.”

That requirement is one that has attracted special interest in Boston and San Bernardino. In the Boston archdiocese, the late former priest John J. Geoghan was transferred from parish to parish while he continued to molest boys. Geoghan’s transfers became public in 2002, and eventually forced Cardinal Bernard Law to resign as archbishop of Boston. Geoghan was later convicted of abusing a boy and sent to prison, where he was killed by another inmate last year.

The Boston archdiocese transferred another accused priest, Paul R. Shanley, to the San Bernardino diocese. Instead of warning the Southern California church about Shanley’s background, it gave him a glowing recommendation.

The charter is built around a zero tolerance policy on sexual abuse, and requires the removal of abusive priests and deacons from the Catholic ministry. Among its mandatory safeguards are local review boards, composed of lay members and clergy. Initially, 57 dioceses were said to be out of compliance with the charter. By Dec. 12, all but 20 had made enough improvements, according to the report. It commended 129 dioceses, or 68% of the total, including Los Angeles, for their efforts in addressing sexual abuse.

The Los Angeles archdiocese, which faces an estimated 500 civil lawsuits brought by alleged victims and is the subject of a criminal grand jury investigation, got high marks in the new report for putting a sexual abuse prevention policy in place years before the national scandal broke in January 2001.

The report also applauded the Los Angeles archdiocese for creating a sexual abuse advisory board in 1994, although victims said that it was an ineffective body. The report noted, however, that the Los Angeles archdiocese needed a written policy on how to “properly report and record allegations of sexual abuse of minors to public authorities.”

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, said that he agreed with that recommendation, and had implemented it in September. He insisted that the archdiocese had “always complied fully” with mandatory reporting laws, but that the reporting was “informal” and no central records were kept. Since September, he said there has been a central log, maintained by the archdiocese’s general counsel.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Monday that his office had spent months in court using subpoenas to obtain archdiocese records on priests accused of abuse.

The grand jury-based proceedings are not public, but are ongoing by Cooley’s account. “We are still in litigation with the archdiocese,” he said. “Cooperation has not been genuine to date. We are still trying to obtain records relevant to criminality.”

The archdiocese said it has turned over all the record to a judge, who is to decide which can be properly forwarded to Cooley.

Mahony said Monday that the audit and report had vindicated the archdiocese. He said its priorities are “are to make sure the church is safe for children and young people and, secondly, that we are committed to reaching out to all victims of sexual abuse and to assist them with pastoral counseling, whatever they need. I think those two priorities are confirmed in this audit report.”

Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S. bishops conference, said his organization had made “a tremendous effort” to protect children from predator priests. “This is a challenge that we must face with complete commitment,” he said in written remarks accompanying the report. “For children to be harmed by ministers of the church is directly contrary to the command of Christ himself while he walked the face of the Earth.... “

Of the 194 dioceses, three were not audited. The Diocese of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and the Armenian Exarchate of New York had scheduling conflicts. The Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, was not audited because it is involved in ongoing litigation.

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20 districts found out of compliance

A report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops found that 20 Roman Catholic dioceses and ethnic eparchies remain out of compliance with a mandatory national plan to report and deal with sexual abuse by priests. The most common failings were: not establishing formal codes of conduct; not developing education programs to spot potential abuse; and not having sufficient background checks. The 20 are:

* Archdiocese of Anchorage

* Archdiocese of New York, N.Y.

* Archdiocese of Omaha

* Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic, N.J.

* Diocese of Alexandria, La.

* Diocese of Arlington, Va.

* Diocese of Bismarck, N.D.

* Diocese of Honolulu

* Diocese of La Crosse, Wis.

* Diocese of Lincoln, Neb.

* Diocese of Memphis, Tenn.

* Diocese of Newton (Melkite-Greek Catholic), Mass.