A history of well-publicized events of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has led to much soul-searching, resulting in risk-management guidelines and procedures that have lowered injuries and claims of children and youth, according to a priest and risk manager for the church.

“The church, like any other institution, has risks it has to manage,” says Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault, a Roman Catholic priest for 23 years. He also is president and CEO of Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md., which offers education and treatment for Catholic priests and religious men and women. He is a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H.

“As much as we try to prevent things from happening in the first place, when they do happen we work with insurers and self-insurance,” he says, observing that the church “generally is not oriented to risk management in a traditional business sense. Our natural pastoral inclination is if somebody is harmed, you ask, 'What can I do to help you?'”

When dealing with crimes against minors, “bishops often rely on attorneys to help them manage risk, and attorneys build the walls,” says Arsenault, whose risk-management efforts have been implemented in the state of New Hampshire and on a national level.

This orientation is different from that of lawyers, he adds, whose job is to manage litigation and try to avoid it.

As a risk manager in the church he engages experts but does not let those experts become decision makers, “which I think is one of the mistakes the church has made.”

He explains that in the past, often an incident that had been reported “ended up on a lawyer's desk, who managed it in a way other than how a pastor or bishop or risk manager would handle it.

He notes that the risk management process would be to look into how the event happened. And if it did happen, “find a way to mitigate the loss and what can be done to resolve it.”

If the loss is valued at $25,000, for example, “I don't want to spend that on a lawyer arguing, and then have to pay for the loss, too,” Arsenault says. “So manage all the costs associated with it.”

He adds that while it's “not all that complicated in the long run to find out whether something happened, it's quite complicated to determine how you're going to monetize it.”

Finding a paradigm for risk management that is “considerate of the church's mission and is looking for the truth and facing the truth honestly, without giving away the bank and caving in to plaintiff's lawyers, is challenging, but I think it can be done,” he says. “That you can manage risk pastorally as well as be fair.”

Arsenault emphasizes, “If I had one thing to repeat it would be that lawyers should not be decision makers; they are experts. Risk managers can be experts, the claims adjuster is an expert, but there is a tendency when there is a difficult decision to be made to want to put it off on the expert.”

The decision maker, whether it be the officer, shareholder “or the bishop, has to ultimately accept the responsibility to gather the right kind of expertise and to make a decision, to render a judgment.”

PLACING PARAMETERS A NECESSITY

In most churches, pastors and others involved with church ministry are not administrators but are oriented to helping people. “It's the art of persuasion to convince people in helping positions to think through systems on how to manage risk,” he says.

While this can be a challenge, “It's not impossible, but the art of it is to help them to see how this will help them ultimately in their work,” Arsenault says.

To develop a platform to raise awareness and orient those who work in the church to a safe environment for children and young people, he says he turned to the expertise of The McCalmon Group Inc. in Tulsa, Okla.

“I think the importance of an organization like that is our best dollars are spent in raising awareness and educating people to risk, because that goes a long way in preventing things from happening,” Arsenault says.

And even when bad things do happen, as they inevitably will, he notes, “You have raised the awareness to a level where the community is ready to respond. They won't say 'it's none of my business.'”

Now, he says, “They have been trained that if they are suspicious about the behavior of an adult around a minor, they should do the right thing—call someone with authority to look into it. Call the civil authorities, notify church authorities. This creates a responsible environment that ultimately mitigates the risk.”

He adds, “It's a lot easier to deal, for example, with a boundary violation by an adult employee with a minor six months after it happens than to deal with it 15 years after it's happened. So creating that kind of awareness and an environment that's oriented to education is key.”

The programs that have been created, he says, have “made a big difference in the church. Our claims are much, much lower in terms of malfeasance with minors by adults in the church.”

According to a research study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the City University of New York in 2004 for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, more abuse occurred in the 1970s than any other decade, peaking in 1980.

PREVENTION IS KEY

Preventing abuse in the first place is the primary objective, he says. “I know enough about how nefarious the reality is: People who want to abuse minors identify with organizations that are porous and don't screen—so we're not on that list anymore.”

He explains that it is now church law in the U.S. for the Catholic Church that every person who works with minors has to have a background check and must be trained in a safe environment.

“There has to be a policy in place in the local diocese or community, where the civil authorities are notified where there's a report, and where the church is oriented to being helpful to someone who reports being harmed,” Arsenault says.

While the risk-management program is national, “this is an international phenomenon as old as the ages and the church is just now trying to get its arms around it as an international issue,” he says. “I would say the church in the U.S. has taken the lead in developing policies for prevention and assistance for people who may be harmed.”

The policies, he says, are laid out in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Its second revision was approved by U.S. Catholic bishops in June 2011.

Special Reports /

Catholic Church Risk Management Effectively Reducing Abuse, Claims

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