Risk management

Christian Century, June 5, 2002 by John Dart

THE LATEST WAVE of sexual abuse scandals crashing upon Catholic parishes and chanceries has apparently missed most Protestant churches. In fact, analysts and insurers give credit to mainline churches for adopting policies and practices in the early 1990s aimed at protecting minors from coercive intimacy in congregational settings. And from the Assemblies of God to Lutherans to Unitarians, denominational leaders are reiterating that their churches will not tolerate abusive acts.

Yet, the same experts warn, the stealth that accompanies sexual mistreatment of children and adults knows no denominational boundaries. Churches and other caring institutions engender trust, which can be either a blessing or a means of deception. Churches are being urged to focus not only on clergy behavior but on that of volunteers.

"Some churches say, `We screen the people that we hire but not the volunteers.' But if you have 200 volunteers and five staff people, well, then you are missing the mark, because the volunteers often have more frequent contact with kids," said Jeff Hanna, executive director of the GuideOne Center for Risk Management based near Charlotte, North Carolina.

Hanna worked as an insurance claims adjuster, campus security officer and undercover narcotics officer before becoming a United Methodist minister. In 2000 he joined GuideOne Insurance, which provides coverage for 49,000 churches--making it one of the largest church insurers in the nation.

Judging by claims filed against churches and by news stories, Hanna said that sexual misconduct occurs in a variety of relationships--between "staff and staff, staff and member, adult and child . . . regardless of church size or theology." Churches in the past decade have been "doing a little better job of screening and training" clergy and staff, Hanna said.

He commended congregations that have a six-month "waiting rule" for volunteers who say, "I like to work with kids." This gives the church time to obtain background information or check references. "What happens is: the pedophile will go somewhere else," he said.

Other questions concern supervision--ensuring that more than one adult is with youngsters, and using rooms with windows or open doors. "We're starting to see children abusing others--stories about a 15-year-old abusing an eight-year-old," Hanna said.

Many guidelines were adopted by denominations in the early 1990s. "Denominations seem to have a little more leverage to get their churches to deal with it than those churches not associated with a denomination," said Hanna.

A pioneer in calling attention to sexual abuse in church life agrees that denominations took a step in the right direction ten years ago. "That was important because there were few policies in place [when the first wave of Catholic scandals surfaced]," said Marie M. Fortune, a United Church of Christ minister who is founder of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, based in Seattle. "Along with that, there was some attention to the education of clergy." This came about partly, she said, because companies refused to insure churches unless they took these steps.

"The downside is that for some judicatories, this was more of an exercise than a long-term response," Fortune said. "Policies were on the shelf but not in front of people. Too often, the missing piece is education of the laity."

The biggest lessons for Protestants from the "Catholic tragedy," she said, is to "implement what we have" and to back policies of mandatory reporting of offenses to law enforcement authorities even if not required by law.

A Colorado case is frequently cited as the one that spurred responses in mainline churches. A woman won a $1.2 million judgment in 1991 against the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado and then-bishop William Frey for covering up the sexual misconduct of a priest.

Though the national Episcopal Church had developed policies on misconduct by 1993, "a lot of people fought back, even in the church," said Rod Webster, senior vice president of the denomination's Church insurance Company, speaking to Episcopal Life. "A lot of people thought it couldn't happen here. But you don't hear that anymore."

The recently retired Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, Frederick H. Borsch, told the Los Angeles Times that he recalled only two cases of clergy abuse during his dozen-plus years as bishop. One was a 1994 incident involving a priest and two teenage victims. Borsch said he wrote to congregants informing them of the problems within days of the priest's arrest. The priest's ordination was eventually revoked.

Noting that there have been only "a few" cases of pedophilia in the Unitarian Universalist Association, President William G. Sinkford wrote May 10 to members that the UUA dealt with those cases "honestly, directly and promptly." He noted that the denomination joined Christian Scientists, American Baptists and the United Church of Christ in backing the recent passage of a Massachusetts law requiring clergy to report child-abuse cases.