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CLA urgently recommends that ministries incorporate specific child abuse prevention
programs to protect the children in their care and to protect the pastors, teachers,
and volunteers who work with those children from false and malicious allegations.
Prevention measures for churches and other ministries should include the following:
- Acknowledge that child abuse, including child sexual abuse, is and should
be a major concern for the ministry; and affirm that ministry leaders are
dedicated to meeting the concern, both as a spiritual and as a criminal problem.
- Raise awareness of the reality of child abuse, neglect and child sexual
abuse by setting aside at least one Sunday a year to promote child protection
and to celebrate children and the family.
- Train ministry leaders to recognize the signs and symptoms of neglect and
abuse, including sexual abuse, and to work with victims and their families
to make mandated reports and/or appropriate referrals for pastoral care or
counseling. Ministries should make it a point to really know the children
and families their ministry serves and to look for danger signs.
- Commit, at a minimum, to a mandatory quarterly meeting for all staff and
volunteers who work with children to alert them to the criminal dangers at
stake. Instruct all staff and volunteers in the appropriate procedures for
preventing and reporting any reasonable suspicion of abuse, including sexual
abuse. Teach staff and volunteers the spiritual and legal danger of violating
their positions of trust with children. Allow time to respond to questions
and observations. Document and record the meetings, clearly identifying all
participants, to use as evidence to protect the ministry should criminal activity
take place despite its best prevention efforts.
- Ministries that work with children should check their ministry liability
policies to make certain the ministry is covered for risks arising out of
child abuse and/or failure to report child abuse. Look for policy exclusions
for criminal and intentional acts such as sexual abuse, and familiarize yourself
with procedures for reporting claims to the insurance company.
- Explain to all staff and volunteers who work with children the enhanced
liability they would face for perverting a position of trust with children
in order to engage in child abuse. Explain that the church is obligated to
report any criminal behavior to the police and will not protect anyone who
engages in such crimes against children.
- Emphasize to staff and volunteers who work with children, especially youth
pastors and teachers, that Christian workers must maintain an appropriate
and professional distance from those to whom they minister. Excessive familiarity
and horseplay can lead to misunderstandings and situations with criminal consequences
or to allegations of abuse that can ruin lives.
- It is especially important that childcare workers never be alone with children.
Isolation invites false allegations as well as secret indiscretions. Your
church should make being alone with a child a dismissible offense for a childcare
worker.
- Every ministry should conduct background checks on all workers who deal
with children. Allegations against a ministry worker should trigger a mandatory
investigation. Children’s workers with reasonable suspicions of sexual or
other child abuse should immediately initiate the ministry’s child abuse reporting
procedures, including reporting to the appropriate authorities and immediately
suspending the accused worker or volunteer pending investigation and resolution
of the allegations.
- The pastor should issue statements from the pulpit at least quarterly reminding
workers and the congregation of the seriousness with which the church and
its staff and volunteers take their Scriptural and legal duties to protect
the children entrusted to their care from abuse. Childcare workers and volunteers
should be happy to comply with background checks and other means of keeping
children safe and protecting themselves from false allegations.
The Christian Law Association
cannot stress too strongly that churches and other ministries must regard the
tragedy that has occurred within the Catholic Church as a wake-up call to do
the serious work required to keep the children your church serves safe from
harm and to protect your church against these types of lawsuits.
To contact the legal missionary ministry of the Christian Law Association,
please call (727) 399-8300 or visit www.ChristianLaw.org.
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