'God calls us to remain vigilant,' says outgoing chair of bishops' safe environment board

By Gina Christian, OSV News

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (OSV News) -- "God calls us to remain vigilant" in caring for clerical abuse survivors and preventing further abuse, said the outgoing chair of the U.S. bishops' lay-led advisory board on child and youth protection.

Suzanne Healy -- who has led the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' National Review Board since 2020, and who will be succeeded by fellow board member James Bogner -- addressed the bishops during the June 14 concluding public session of the USCCB's Spring Plenary Assembly, held this year in Louisville, Kentucky.

Healy reflected on the recently released 2023 annual report regarding compliance with the U.S. bishops' "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," established in 2002 amid a number of emerging clerical abuse scandals. Commonly called the Dallas Charter, the document lays out a comprehensive set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, and includes guidelines for reconciliation, healing, accountability and prevention of abuse.

In the two decades since the charter's adoption, "we have much to be proud of," Healy told the bishops. "As a result of the commitments you and your brother bishops made in 2002 with the adoption of the Dallas Charter, we are creating a culture of safety far beyond what was envisioned nearly 25 years ago."

For the period of July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, the report found a more than 51% drop in historical -- or non-recent -- allegations from those reported in the same period last year, from 2,704 in 2022 to 1,308 in 2023. The decrease was partly due to the resolution of allegations received as a result of lawsuits, said the report.

Another milestone was the full participation of all 196 dioceses and eparchies in the charter audit, a 100% response rate that was unprecedented. Of those, 48 were visited on-site by auditing firm StoneBridge Business Partners, with another 17 audited remotely, and 131 other dioceses and eparchies submitting data for the report.

At the same time, the number of new allegations from minors remained similar to the prior year, at 17, Healy told the bishops, adding, "Certainly, one is too many."

While safe environment training programs, background checks for adults working with children, "robust" codes of conduct, and other efforts "have substantially reduced the potential for abuse today … we have not yet reached zero," she said in her address.

She advised studying the 17 cases using "outside expertise" along with high reliability organization principles, which maximize safety in complex organizations where error stands to inflict great harm.

Among those principles is what organizational management experts call "preoccupation with failure," which enables organizations to detect, anticipate and ultimately eliminate errors. HRO principles also "encourage leaders to access and to defer to the knowledge and wisdom of subject matter experts," said Healy, who recommended that bishops and diocesan officials arrange for training in this regard provided by the USCCB's Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection.

Further research, along with an ongoing review and revision of the charter to ensure protection amid a complex and evolving society are essential, said Healy -- as are plans to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the charter in 2027 through a day of prayer and "(honoring) the commitment to spiritual healing and restorative justice."

Healy told OSV News that the National Review Board wants to "raise the bar" on existing policies for safeguarding children and youth.

Both in her USCCB address and subsequent interview with OSV News, Healy pointed to the Dallas Charter and its implementation to date as a basis for building out safe environment protocols for vulnerable adults.

In the 2023 annual report, Healy, a licensed marriage and family therapist who served as the victim assistance coordinator for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from 2007 to 2016, also cautioned against "charter fatigue," and emphasized -- in that document and in her USCCB address -- the centrality of caring for survivors.

"We must keep the child of today, the child of tomorrow, and especially that child of yesterday at the center of all our decision-making," she told the bishops. "An important part of our message is to accompany those survivors who have experienced lifelong trauma as a result of the abuse they experienced. Many of you bishops have listened, affirmed, apologized to, learned from, and journeyed beautifully with survivors and their families. You have also taken responsibility in supporting ongoing assistance and accompaniment."

"Survivors will continue to teach us and tell us how we can best accompany them," she said in her address. "We must listen in a synodal way, expecting to hear in the voices of the survivors the promptings of the Holy Spirit."

"We have to balance this tension between what we've accomplished in safe environment practices, and taking care of those survivors from yesterday -- the children of yesterday -- that were harmed," Healy told OSV News. "We still need to keep them at the forefront of all our decision-making, along with the child of today, in accompanying them in a lifelong journey.

"We can't forget them," she added. "They've got so much to teach us."