CINCINNATI (OH), Cincinnati Post
Staff and wire reports, April 12, 2007

"Report faults dioceses training"

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati was one of only two American dioceses
not in compliance with the Roman Catholic Church's national standards
for prevention of sexual abuse, a new report finds.

The report, issued Wednesday on behalf of the National Review Board,
the lay group the bishops created to implement their standards,
showed that in 2006, only the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the
Diocese of Burlington in Vermont didn't fully comply with the
standards.

Both dioceses needed to complete safe environment training for all
volunteers who work with children, said William A. Gavin, president
of the Massachusetts-based Gavin group, which did the audits.

Both dioceses had been very conscientious about working toward full
compliance, Gavin said, and he expected they would reach that goal
this year.

Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, said the
archdiocese shouldn't be judged as lax on meeting the standards based
on the report and stressed that no one who hasn't gone through the
proper training works with children. Moreover, he said, that's been a
policy of the archdiocese for 14 years, long before the U.S. bishops
created their standards.

But the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests faulted the
archdiocese for not moving quickly enough.

"Training church staff to spot signs of abuse is a simple but
important process," Outreach Director Barbara Dorris said. "There's
really no excuse for foot-dragging on this."

Andriacco said that all staff, including priests, deacons and
educators, have had the training.

Last year, there were more than 10,000 volunteers that the
archdiocese couldn't show had had the training, but this year there
are only about 3,000, he said.

One reason the archdiocese can't show all the volunteers have had the
training is that many took it years ago, before the archdiocese had
centralized records, he said.

"We started to do this before most dioceses did," he said. "As of
last year, we had 5,000 names on written records that we couldn't
read."

"We have a higher standard for compliance than the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops," he said. "We don't say a parish is compliant
unless we have the records."

Only 29 dioceses and eparchies, out of 195 in the United States, were
audited last year.