Statement of Mr. William A. Gavin, The Gavin Group
Report on the Diocesan/Eparchial
Compliance Audits - 2004
February 18, 2005
Once again in 2004, the Gavin Group, Inc. had the honor, privilege and responsibility of conducting the national audit of the implementation of the charter for the protection of children and young people.
The honor stems from being chosen for the second year to participate in such an important endeavor of tracking the progress of the Catholic Church toward restoring the trust and confidence of the faithful.
The privilege stems from being given the task of evaluating and reporting the compliance of the dioceses and eparchies with the pledge of the bishops to fully develop and maintain a safe environment for all of the children and young people.
The responsibility is to the victims/survivors to ensure that mechanisms are in place and are being followed to assist them through the horrors they have encountered, and to develop safeguards against future violations of children and young people.
I can attest that based on the findings of the 2004 audits, much has been done by motivated people, sincerely dedicated toward bringing closure to past misdeeds and to heal those who have been so abused.
More however, can and must be done before this closure is fully realized.
As one of the external manifestations of the promise of the bishops to heal the church, the audit process will go forward in 2005. Again, auditors, with a passion toward eliminating the abuse of children and to reporting the facts as they are found, will be selected for this important endeavor.
Every single diocese and eparchy will be audited and the completeness with which it will be done will not be diminished from the past. The format will be flexible to allow the process to be fully conducted. On-site audits will be conducted in some dioceses and eparchies that had unremediated required actions in 2004.
A focused on-site audit will take place in dioceses and eparchies where required actions were remediated. Verified self-audits will occur in other dioceses and eparchies. In all cases, the mandates promulgated by the bishops themselves and set forth in the charter for the protection of children and young people, will be audited.
Permit me, if you will, to speak for a moment concerning the findings of the 2004 audits.
At the time of the audits of 194 dioceses and eparchies, 74% of them were fully compliant with the charter and of the remaining 26% that were in a non-compliant status; all but 4% of them brought themselves into compliance by the end of December, 2004.
By comparison, of the 191 dioceses and eparchies audited in 2003, 19 ended with unremediated deficiencies, as opposed to 7 of 194 dioceses and eparchies audited in 2004.
Of the 17 articles in the charter, the most common deficiencies were found to be associated with articles 12 (safe environment training) and article 13 (background evaluations) and no deficiencies were found in articles 3, 14, 16 and 17.
The charter focuses on priests, deacons and children, with additional emphasis, of course, on all others who may have regular contact with children and young people. Safe environment training is of paramount importance.
Only 83.8% of priests and 82.3% of deacons have received this vital training. And, sadly, only 51.5% of the children have received the training.
Efforts must be redoubled to ensure that all safe environment training is completed as soon as possible.
While it is difficult to determine all of the reasons why so many victims/survivors bravely stepped forward during the 2004 audit period, I believe that they have felt empowered by the positive actions of the church. These actions have served to demonstrate that the church is responding to the spiritual, psychological and physical concerns of victim-survivors.
Much has been done but much remains to be accomplished. This realization by the bishops and eparchs is exemplified by the authorization of the continuation of the audits for 2005.