Churches adopt crime checks

By Bill Broadway
Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Everybody is in favor of protecting youth from sexual predators, including religious organizations that in recent years have intensified requirements for criminal background checks for clergy, youth leaders and summer camp counselors.

But many people are unaware that the same rules increasingly are being applied to parents and other volunteers who work with children and teenagers in churches, synagogues and mosques. That includes volunteers in church-run schools and chaperones for skiing or camping trips and other extended outings.

"All paid and nonpaid staff and volunteers that work with children at Metropolitan are required to complete the Children Abuse Prevention and Intervention training and to have a criminal background check," according to a May 19 memo to parents at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington. The memo was sent to parents who had volunteered to accompany the youth choir to Walt Disney World but had not completed the training and clearance process.

"Given the time constraints, we are not requiring you to complete the training but we are requiring ... a criminal background check," wrote the Rev. Sherrill McMillan, minister of counseling and family services. "This is not a credit check."

Only after being assured that none of the potential chaperones had been arrested or convicted of any sex crime did the church allow them to go on last month's trip.

If you're a church volunteer who has not been asked to submit to a criminal background check, it probably won't be long before you will be, said the Rev. David Parachini, an Episcopal priest and convener of the Nathan Network. The two-year-old organization based in Windsor, Conn., was founded to prevent child abuse in the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church.

Parachini said criminal background checks are increasingly common in the religious community, "which quite honestly has not paid enough attention" to the issue compared with secular groups such as the Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts.

"Absent that kind of screening procedure, you're hanging out a sign notifying pedophiles and ephebophiles, 'Here's open season on your victim group,' " Parachini said, referring to adults who are sexually attracted to pre- or post-pubescent youth.

In the past, Parachini said, people assumed "if it's church, everybody's motives are honorable, and there's no need to worry. In an ideal world, that would be true. But it's not an ideal world."

Procedures vary from public records searches to police and FBI checks. Congregations with large staffs often conduct their own Internet searches for arrests, using forms filled out by applicants, while others hire agencies, Parachini said.

Fingerprinting, also increasingly common, offers another guard against applicants using aliases. Typically, applicants go to the local police station to be fingerprinted, and many police departments will run the checks for little or no charge, Parachini said.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has required fingerprinting of volunteers since 1999, according to spokeswoman Susan Gibbs. To ensure compliance, the archdiocese recently purchased an electronic fingerprinting machine and requires each volunteer to come to a central location to receive a "live scan" that is forwarded to law enforcement agencies.

"Most people have participated in this process readily, which really doesn't take that much time considering children's safety is at sake," Gibbs said. A few parents have complained, but "the fact that our background checks have prevented five sex offenders from volunteering or working with children in our care shows the importance of doing all this."

The Rev. Richard McFail, stated clerk of the National Capital Presbytery, said the regional office of the 2.5 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) requires criminal background checks for clergy, but does not have the authority to do so for staff and volunteers; that is up to individual congregations to decide. About one-fourth of the 112 churches have adopted child-protection policies, some of which include criminal background checks for staff and volunteers.

In most cases, anyone who works with children must have "been involved and known in the congregation" at least six months and complete a training course before assuming such a role, McFail said. Two adults are required in every classroom — or one adult with an open or glass door.

Local religious group opts for education

The Hawai'i Conference United Church of Christ is alerting its pastoral workers, volunteers and staff about policies and procedures that protect children in its care.

Dorothy Lester of the Hawai'i Conference said she has not heard of any abuse in the year and half "since I've been here," but the organization is making changes to protect young constituents in the future.

"We're trying to be preventative," she said.

HCUCC efforts have included meeting with church moderators and training clergy about "boundary" issues.

The denomination also has paid $1,500 for booklets developed by the United Methodist Church to be distributed to its estimated 150 active clergy and 600 lay employees for churches across the island. The booklets outline ways for a church to develop its own policies, and give tips on educating staff on how to keep churches safe.

"Local churches are very welcoming, and it's important to be welcoming," Lester said. "If you volunteer, people assume it's out of spiritual commitment. But it might be doing something out of your psychological need. We want to make it so people can't take care of their psychological need" through the church.

Ways to do that include making sure two adults are with a child at all times; making sure all classes have windows, and not sending children off unsupervised.

"I think we feel very safe in Hawai'i, but we need to be alert, be safer and recognize that we need to know people working with our children," Lester said.

Each of the state's five UCC associations will receive a set of videos to train clergy during the next two years, and the conference is revising policies for dealing with misconduct.

Conference interim minister Don Sevetson, whose last day on the job was yesterday (the Rev. Charles Buck takes over in September), said the effort to protect children is not new. With a statewide membership of 18,632, the church group has been working for decades to stay ahead of the problem.

"I think the hard part of it is continuous updating of education," Sevetson said. "There are always new people coming into the system. ... (We are) surer it's not going to happen here if we take the right steps in favor of safety. But the fact that the Catholic Church is getting reams of publicity doesn't mean it's the only place it's a problem. Anybody in ecclesiastic leadership these days never knows what the next telephone call is going to bring."