Current Resources
Faced with the crisis of child sexual abuse by clerics that dramatically came to light in 2002, the church set up an aggressive safe environment program that is the envy of other organizations that work with children.
From 2003 through 2007, when the last audit of how the Catholic Church’s safe environment effort was completed, we can say the Catholic Church in the United States:
- Trained more than 1.8 million clergy, employees, and volunteers in parishes in how to create safe environments and prevent child sexual abuse.
- Prepared more than 5.7 million children to recognize abuse and protect themselves.
- Ran background checks on more the 1,535,000 volunteers and employees, 164,000 educators, 51,000 clerics and 4,955 candidates for ordination.
The following are resources dioceses/eparchies may find useful in making the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People part of what we do as Church.