Present: William Burleigh, Alice Bourke Hayes, Ph.D., Michael Bland, Psy.D., Pamela Hayes, Jane Chiles, Honorable Anne Burke, Robert Bennett, Paul McHugh, MD, Nicholas Cafardi, Ray Sigfried. Absent: Honorable Justice Petra Jimenez Maes, Honorable Leon Panetta.

William Burleigh

The only announcement that we have today is to make official that our acting chair, designated by bishop Wilton Gregory, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is the Honorable Anne Burke, who formerly was vice-chair of the Board. So she's our new boss. I don't know if you have any words for us, your honor.

Anne Burke

I just want to thank you all for coming and taking the time. I know you all have very busy schedules. We're anxious to let you know that the work we've been doing this past year has been quite intensive and quite good. I think that's all, Bill.

William Burleigh

I should mention that two of our members were unable to be here. The Honorable Justice Petra Jimenez Maes of the New Mexico Supreme Court had to be at a conference in Puerto Rico. And Leon Panetta at the last minute had a family matter arise, and he is unable to be here.

We're going to be talking today about a report that you find in your packet titled "To the Catholic faithful of the United States." We thought this was an appropriate format to make an accounting of our stewardship based on our year of activity. For those who have perhaps not had an opportunity to go through the letter, the individuals who have specialized in sections of this letter are going to make a few remarks, and then you all can ask whatever questions you have. On the second page, we talk about the establishment of the Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, which probably was the biggest assignment we were given by the bishops in their Dallas Charter. It amazes me that one year later we have found a terrific director, Kathleen McChesney, who is in the audience. Will you wave, Kathleen?

She has assembled a staff and this office has since the first of January been up and running, fully functioning, and really serving the purpose that the bishops envisioned in Dallas. The second item: we were charged with establishing a safe environment standard, and Mrs. Jane Chiles has been in charge of the subcommittee that has handled that.

Jane Chiles

The work around safe environments is about the future. It is about the Catholic Church being a safe place for God's children, and there is nothing more important that any of us could be involved in than taking all the steps necessary to ensure that we are that safe place for our kids. To that end, the Charter established and gave us our authority and also laid out a plan. So, over the last year, we did meet with a number of people who are of great renown in the area of child abuse and particularly with the focus around prevention. And they worked with us to identify a range of programs that are out there, the kinds of things that are currently available. In the meantime, after looking at the kind of ‘product' that is out there, we have made ourselves available to the dioceses. We have established a set of standards of what we think safe environments should be, and this involves training – of everybody, from the members of the clergy, the teachers, all the volunteers, the parents, addressing the question, what is it that is needed to assure that the children in my care are safe? And we also are requiring the dioceses to work with the children on safe touch programs and programs that help children to recognize what are the boundaries of healthy behavior. So we look forward to the work with the dioceses. As the audit proceeds in each of the 195 dioceses, we are going to be able to identify to a greater extent some of the best policies and best practices that are out there. And later in the press conference, if there's a moment left and you have any questions, I'd be happy to entertain your questions.

William Burleigh

Thank you, Jane. She referred to the audit. One of the major jobs of the Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection is to audit every diocese and eparchy of the United States, all 195 of them, to determine whether or not the bishops are complying with what they said they intended to do in Dallas: to create the safe Church for our children. To that end, the National Review Board and Ms. McChesney hired a firm headed by William Gavin, a retired FBI official and head of the Gavin Group in Boston, who in turn assembled a force of 54 auditors with law enforcement and accounting background. A number of [former] FBI agents are among them. They have fanned out across the country, beginning in June. They are auditing 11 dioceses per week in teams of either two or four auditors, depending on the size of the diocese. The letter said that so far 31 dioceses have been audited. That number is now up to 45, and each week the number is increasing. The head of the audit and compliance subcommittee is Mr. Ray Sigfried, and he would like to say a few words about the audit.

Ray Sigfried

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for being here. I've got a little affliction than came on a couple years ago. My body doesn't work very good but my brain does, so they let me stay on this board. I'm very happy to be here. We are well on our way to completing a very successful audit and compliance trial. We are in charge of assuring the safeguards of our children from now on, forever, and when I say trial, this is the first of many many years, maybe throughout the rest of the life of the Church, to ensure that your and my children are all safeguarded from abusing priests. Ms. McChesney's office and the Gavin Group, I can assure you, are not choirboys. They are doing their job and doing it well, as we have already seen with the results that we are receiving from 45 dioceses. But the work is not done. We have to look at the results ourselves and pass them to the Board and to Ms. McChesney's office. I can tell you that there are some good examples of dioceses in compliance, and there are some of the other types as well. But this is yeoman's work, and it has begun and will go on for a long time. We have completed 45 dioceses in almost two months. In November we'll have our final review, and we'll pass those documents along to the public at the end of the year. If you want to know what we're auditing, read the Charter. We're meeting with each bishop. That's mandatory – that each bishop shows his leadership and his passion for safeguarding our children. And you can rest assured that this Catholic Church is going to be one bright light by the time we're finished at the end of this year. So all of you who are not Catholic, I invite you to convert. Thank you.

William Burleigh

Article nine of the Charter calls for us to commission a descriptive study of the nature and scope of the crisis that includes statistics on the numbers of victims and perpetrators, and for that part we'll turn to Alice Hayes.

Alice Hayes, Ph.D.

Thank you for receiving our report today. We have organized and begun to implement a research program. It has two components, and the first one, as required by article nine, is the descriptive study on the nature and scope of the problem. This is an effort to gather information about the number of perpetrators, the number of victims, and the circumstances under which the abuse occurred. To do that study, we have commissioned the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to gather that data, and they have initiated their report. We are very encouraged with the cooperation and the response they are getting. At this point, over two-thirds of the dioceses have submitted information for their analysis, and we are hopeful and confident that those who have not yet participated will be encouraged to do so, and are scheduled to do so. Then that information needs to be placed in context, and the second part of our study will be an investigation of the causes and the context in which the circumstances have occurred. Mr. Robert Bennett will speak about the context of the study, and then Dr. Paul McHugh will talk about the study on causes.

Robert Bennett

Thank you, good afternoon. The causes study really has two parts to it. One, for lack of a better term, is an investigatory stage, and the second, part two, is what we will call the epidemiological study, which Dr. McHugh will talk about more. In the investigatory stage, what we are doing is we are interviewing numerous people: cardinals, bishops, theologians, victims, victims' representatives, experts in the field, doctors, psychologists, all with a view to writing the part one report, which will be issued publicly on or about the first of the year, sometime hopefully in January, and as Dr. Hayes indicated, it will incorporate and put in context the results and statistics from the John Jay study. You might be interested in the format. The interviews usually take anywhere from two to four hours. They're rather detailed, and are attended by the Board, or members of the Board. In addition to the interviews, we have read books, treatises, and articles. There's just a ton of stuff out there, and that's all going to be put together in the format of the report. I should say that the Board has spent on this and on the other parts that you're hearing about today literally in excess of 3,000 or 4,000 hours since last June. For many of us, it's become our most full-time thing – not exactly, but almost. But I think you'll see the results of that soon, next January.

The second part of the causes study is a broader study and that is what we call the epidemiological study, and Dr. McHugh, who has a great deal of expertise in that kind of thing, will speak to that now.

Paul McHugh, MD

Well, as you know, from article nine, we've been asked to commission a study on the causes and context of this epidemic of child abuse that has afflicted our Church and is known to all of you. Ray Sigfried has spoken eloquently about how we're going to make sure that our children are safe in the dioceses, and in the schools, and in the churches therein. A key aspect of prevention, recognized by the bishops, will be the appreciation of the kinds of individuals who were responsible for this abuse, and who have been influenced in some way out of their own psychological makeup or some aspect of the environment that they were in to do these heinous crimes. We feel after we have enumerated the number of the cases, the scope and extent of this problem, and heard from distinguished people in our Church, and related to our Church, what they think might be the causes for this, that we should take the next step of finding an expert group of people in our country who could go much more deeply into the individuals themselves and do a comparison, for example, of the psychological makeup of offending vs. non-offending priests, and thus put ourselves in a position of understanding who and what are more risky situations, more risky people, and more risky backgrounds of individuals that could be predators on our kids.

We think that in fact the Catholic Church is going to be the first institution ultimately in America or even in the world that has looked at itself in this kind of fashion, in a public way, through first-class scientific means, to understand the factors that have produced this terrible event, so that we can prevent it, and by understanding it, prevent it in the future from happening. I'm of course, as a Catholic person, very pleased that the Church is willing to go into this depth, is willing to do it in a public way, and ultimately publish this material for all of the people in America to see. As well, of course, as a person who's a psychiatric epidemiologist who works in Baltimore's [Johns Hopkins] Bloomberg School of Public Health, I'm very professionally interested in the success of this, and the success therefore of this for all people interested in the public health of children in our country.

Robert Bennett

Paul, maybe people are interested in the amount of time required to do the study, as well as a ballpark cost.

Paul McHugh, MD

Of course, this is going to be a very extensive and complicated and expensive project. Again, we hope to find an external group. We ourselves are going to commission it to a group of people or an institution that has done similar type of work in the past. Alice Hayes and I are writing up a request for proposals that will be ready in September, that will go out to institutions around the country asking them if they would be willing to share in part of this study or take it all on. But it's going to take several years of course to do this if it's going to be individual, confidential, and research-driven interviews. And it will cost several millions of dollars to do this. Again, I think it's absolutely essential to go from the description of the problem, the nature and scope, through the ideas of others to what they think might be the causes, and out really to a study of the offenders and non-offenders, and do comparison or case-controlled studies that would allow ourselves to speak to the risk factors that are involved in this behavior. To study a behavior is not like studying something like the measles. You're going to be studying a whole variety of things – the psychosocial, the psychosexual, the religious and the moral environment in which this awful thing could come about and try to see how we all can both understand it and prevent it in the future. It is going to be an extensive study and it will be quite expensive.

William Burleigh

That's a quick rundown of what a dozen people have been doing for the past year to address a problem that bears on us all. In closing, I just want to say that our ultimate goal remains a Church that's cleansed of scandal, that's secure for the young, and that will be reunited in holiness. I'd invite your questions.

Q: Why did you feel it was necessary to use FBI agents to conduct this audit, and what kind of a message do you feel it sends to those who are being audited?

Anne Burke

I think it's very important to the Board that we have Kathleen McChesney and her expertise in this area of audits. It was also important to the Board to look at the timing of getting things done. And what better individual than a former law enforcement person who can ask the appropriate questions, determine that no wool will be pulled over his or her eyes, and then take that answer and take it to the next step where it might lead to. So in terms of doing a professional job of this audit, it was very very important that the appropriate professionals were doing the audit and knew how to do it, and had done it in the past. Alice Hayes wanted to speak to that as well.

Alice Hayes, Ph.D.

I was simply going to make the same remark. This is a governance compliance audit, so it's not like an accounting audit. In governance compliance, you look at people who have done those sorts of audits before, and this particular firm had expertise in that area.

William Burleigh

We view our job as restoring credibility and I can think of no better means to restore credibility than to get the kind of personnel that we've secured to make the audit.

Q: Can you describe who the auditors are speaking to besides the employees of the chanceries? There were some questions raised by SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) members outside about whether, for instance, they're speaking with survivors. I've heard members of Voice of the Faithful in the New York area complain that they have asked to speak to auditors and have not gotten a clear answer as to whether they'll be allowed to.

Michael Bland, Psy.D., D.Min.

I think there's a format that the auditors are using. And certainly, as Ray Sigfried indicated earlier, the first person they meet with is the local bishop and the last person they meet with is the local bishop. And in that, realizing there are 195 dioceses, archdioceses, and eparchies, each person or each bishop treats the structures a little differently, but they are meeting with individuals on the lay review boards, they are meeting with victims, they are meeting with priests, and they are meeting with individuals that may or may not have something positive or negative to say. And the information is gathered by the auditors in many different ways, other than just documents.

Q: Can you give us a sense then of what these audits will actually list? Will there be numbers of victims, how much has each diocese spent, where did that money come from, the sale of real estate? How specific are you going to be?

Robert Bennett

That's not what the audit is. The audit is a compliance audit to see if the dioceses are complying with the Charter. That data that you just raised is part of the John Jay inquiry and they will be getting specific statistics on those areas which you just mentioned, but that is not the audit.

William Burleigh

The John Jay study addresses itself in three points: number of perpetrators, number of victims, and cost to the Church. Essentially those are the questions that this study endeavors to answer.

Q: Regarding the psychological study and the effort to prevent these cases from happening, would this be a kind of profiling that would be used to screen potential candidates for the priesthood? Is that what you hope to get out of this, a kind of database, to screen people and then to not put them in situations where these things might come to the forefront?

Paul McHugh, MD

Yes indeed, that would be one of the outcomes of the causes and context study, we presume, once we begin to identify through interviews, open interviews, the goal to look at the priesthood through its members. Ultimately, we hope that we will come forward with a set of risk factors, and they won't be simple causes. But what kinds of risks, what kinds of features, in a biography or in a psychological makeup of a person, put him more at risk to be an offender? If, for example, he was for abused himself as a child, if he's lonely, or without a friendship network, if he's celibate or non-celibate? All of those features we think will be studied under this causes and context assessment, and ultimately, we will develop a better profile of the more risky person, and those kinds of things would be used not only in selecting priests, but also in following priests, because some of these are things we could change over time in the biography of a particular person. Ultimately, though, that's the way those things would be used. Remember, the first issue before us is description of these matters. Prescription, ultimately, how to use this information so as to protect children in the future, will come, and is hard to predict at the moment.

Robert Bennett

But also, just to add, we're not going to have to wait for three or four years to be able to get relevant information that can be asked of applicants to the priesthood and seminaries now. In most if not all parts of the country, there are questionnaires [for seminary applicants] in place now, and in addition to that, our part one study is gathering more information which will be able to supplement that.

Q: Could you please tell me if homosexual behavior will be one of the areas that will be analyzed to see whether or not priests later on engaged in these criminal behaviors?

Robert Bennett

Yes.

Q: There was another case that had widespread problems with sexual abuse of children which made some similar studies and audits, and the results of those studies were actually used against the persons in question. Has any consideration been given to that?

Robert Bennett

Let me tell you the position of this Board on that difficult but very fair question. At the end of the day, the protection of children and young people is of paramount importance. And if there is a conflict between disclosure or the protection of young children, it is the unanimous view of this Board, and we have communicated that to the bishops of the country, that disclosure is what is required.

Q: I'm wondering if there is a cultural component to this. Hispanics/Latinos make up a large percentage of Catholics in America. When you take into account that culturally, Hispanics by nature don't want to raise questions even if they're asked, my question is, do you have bilingual investigators? Do you have people with expertise in cultural issues specifically dealing with Hispanics?

William Burleigh

Kathleen [McChesney], can you address that question? I think you probably have a better handle on it.

Kathleen McChesney

The answer to that is twofold. Within the diocese, there are victims' assistance coordinators and there are people who are in regular ministry who know their communities, and many people who work in the Church today are bilingual. It has been brought to our attention from sociologists and people who know the faith communities that in some cultures, people are very reluctant to come forward about sexual abuse. So what we're trying to do is find the right educational programs and ways of communicating information to those people in the faith community so that they will lose the fear about coming forward. But it's very difficult, whether you're Anglo or Hispanic or any other ethnicity.

Q: Yes, but culturally, there are Hispanics who will work a 12-hour day and at the end of the day, they'll say, "Give me what you want." And they'll take five dollars – I've seen it with my own two eyes. So for someone who was raised in that culture of not questioning authority, what special efforts are being made, if any? The Latino population, I would argue, is your largest constituency in America.

Kathleen McChesney

Like I said, within various ministries around the United States, particularly in those areas where there are large concentrations of a particular ethnicity, in this case Hispanic, we have all kinds of ministries that specialize in aiding those people in learning about the culture, about authority. It's going to be a slow process because, as you indicate, this is something that people have lived with for a long time.

William Burleigh

The diocese of San Bernardino, California, with a large Hispanic population, has what we think is a model program. Half of it [the written policy] is English, half Spanish, and I'd be happy to share it with you at the end of the press conference.

Q: You said that two-thirds of the dioceses have participated so far in the John Jay study. What's wrong with the other one-third? Is it reluctance?

Alice Hayes, Ph.D.

One of the problems is the complexity of some of the dioceses. Also, in the beginning, there were some questions about the survey that needed to be addressed. Those were primarily about the assurance of confidentiality, and the way in which some of those questions were worded. Those concerns have been addressed at special meetings with the heads of those dioceses, so we are now assured that we will get very good cooperation from them.

Anne Burke

I would just add to that – the time isn't up for compliance. There's also built into that descriptive study some time for extensions. Clearly, with 195 dioceses in the United States, there is good record keeping and there is bad record keeping. Each one is so different. Going back and getting information from the past 50 years is not that easy, so we have built into that research some time for extensions. So we're not quite there – with who has complied, who hasn't, and who's willing to, but so far, two-thirds have submitted their responses.

Q: I have a question regarding the study that you just mentioned. Am I to understand that the survey is going to be a self-reporting study, or is there any certification going to be done about the data that will be provided to you so that people will have confidence in the overall results?

Alice Hayes, Ph.D.

The information that is being gathered is coming from the individual dioceses, and it is self-reporting. There is obviously going to be an analysis and comparison of that data, and an effort made to validate it, but the nature of it is primarily self-reported information.

Q: I'm a CPA and I have some audit experience, and so my question is about the audit that's being undertaken right now. I understand that two-thirds have complied with the informational study, but the audit is different. With respect to the audit, my experience as an auditor is that there are two kinds of behavior – there's behavior while the auditor's there, and then there's behavior when the auditor is not there, which is most of the year, quite frankly. I don't doubt the integrity of the Gavin Group and the efforts that they're putting forth. My question is what part of this Board's Charter is it to make sure that there is continued compliance with the safeguards that are reported by this Board, not only this year, but the year after, and the next and the next? Will there be some type of internal audit department set up by the U.S. bishops that will make surprise visits to dioceses and to parishes, and will serve as a point of reference for people who want to call in with problems?

William Burleigh

I think Kathleen McChesney can answer that – that's the biggest job of her office.

Kathleen McChesney

You're absolutely right – an audit process is only as good as the day the auditors leave. Recognizing that, what we're in the process of doing is trying to determine what would be the right protocol in the out years, and it will probably be a combination of on-site audits and self-reporting over maybe a three-year cycle, which is what is somewhat common in U.S. government systems. We're not certain yet. We did think it was important that in year one, all 195 dioceses be audited on site.

Anne Burke

The fact that we're doing the audit is a wonderful opportunity for Kathleen McChesney's office, and part of Kathleen's job is to help these dioceses come up to compliance. Take for instance what Jane Chiles was saying about safe environments. This is a great time to say that, for example, "Texas has a wonderful model program. Let's go down and look at that, let's bring it back here, and help you come into compliance." So this is something that's going to be an ongoing process. And Kathleen's office is working with people to help them come into compliance. After all, this is what we wanted to do, and this is what they wanted to do: protect children.

Robert Bennett

Children are safer today than they were five years ago. They're not safe enough. All of the things you've heard about today are going to go a long way to protect children in the future. But make no mistake about it, unless the bishops of the country are fully committed to this, take our report, take our recommendations and run with them and work with them, and put the protection of children as their very highest priority, then much of our work will be wasted. In the last analysis, it depends on the bishops of this country to be shepherds of their flocks, to get intimately involved with this very great crisis.

Q: Given the cover-up we've seen, what can this board or its agents or its auditors do about it?

William Burleigh

I was going to mention previously in the audits – we are commissioned to name those dioceses that are not complying with the audit. And we certainly intend to do that.

Robert Bennett

Also, it's going to be a lot harder to cover up anything now, given the creation of the Board, given the Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, given the audits that are taking place, given the requirement of reporting. This Board has made it absolutely clear to the bishops that allegations of this abuse are to be reported to the civil authorities. Is it perfect? No, it's not perfect. But it's going to be a lot harder to cover up anything in the future as compared to the past.

Q: Does the Board have any authority to report to the civil authorities what you find out? Could you report a diocese to the civil authorities?

Robert Bennett

You have to understand we are not criminal investigators investigating specific cases of child abuse.

Q: Are you planning to share that information with the authorities?

Robert Bennett

We are going to publish a report, but again I say, we are not investigating specific cases of child abuse. If someone reports that to us, we forward it on to the appropriate persons. But we're not law enforcement investigators of specific cases.

Jane Chiles

I think it's also very important to know – when you look at the hard copy of the report that we are giving you today, we are addressing this to the faithful of the Church, to the laity, specifically, and that is where we think the greatest accountability has already begun to occur. People have made it very clear that they are unhappy with the situation that our Church finds itself in, and we will continue with all of the reports that we issue to go directly to the laity and make sure that they understand who is complying and who is not complying, and that they understand what the processes are that in place – that should be in place – in their diocese.

Q: Related to that, there seems to be a difference of opinion among bishops about what the Charter requires in terms of a diocesan report, and I've talked to a lot of people from different dioceses who want their bishops to release the names of priest who've been removed, what happened to them, have the accusations been found credible, and where are they now? I think several of the bishops in the New York area have said they will not do that – in order to protect the priests' rights. Will this Board make recommendations as to what the bishops should do on that?

Anne Burke

First of all, reports of what, to whom? As you well know, the bishop has his own ability to release whatever information he wants. Going back to what our research is, and the questions we have through our audit and the John Jay study, we are asking for a lot of this information, and we will be disclosing that information in our report.

Pamela Hayes

One of the things that we try to do is continue in the spirit of transparency. You could recommend that you share numbers, share information. That's something that the Board has tried to do, encouraging each bishop in every diocese, archdiocese, and eparchy, to do that. The problem comes in where you can't enforce compliance – you can't make people do things that they decided not to do. The only way that you're able to do that type of thing is to bear public exposure, public pressure, and have people like yourselves ask the questions, "Why aren't you doing this? Why is it important to have it not disclosed?" And that's the kind of thing that this Board can do as in encouraging various bishops.

William Burleigh

Thank you for coming.

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