After months of laying the groundwork, Archdiocese of Chicago officials have begun a training program designed to curb sexual abuse and assure protection for children.

The initiative, called the “Covenant to Protect Children,” was announced at a Sept. 17 press conference. It sets up a new archdiocesan ministry, the Office for the Protection of Children and Youth, to be headed by former director of campus ministry Jan Slattery.

The first of many sessions to train adults to spot and prevent abuse was held just days before the announcement. Ultimately, training sessions will include more than 25,000 clergy, archdiocesan employees and volunteers, encompassing 375 parishes, 283 schools and the more than 100 ministries and programs.

Archdiocesan Personnel Services director Carol Fowler said planning for the covenant has been going on for over a year. The name “covenant” was chosen because of its biblical implications.

“A covenant is a sacred agreement,” she said, adding that the protection of children is a sacred obligation of the church.

The covenant enhances procedures that have been in place for years, said archdiocesan Chancellor Jim Lago. Many were put in place by Cardinal Bernardin in the early 1990s and have been rewritten and improved several times, the last time after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in June, 2002, which mandated training programs in all dioceses and eparchies, he said.

“We are extremely pleased with this new program,” Lago said. It is “our key goal: the protection of children.” Abuse of children “is a crime and a sin and an unspeakable horror. We have no greater responsibility than to ensure the safety of children,” Lago said. “In 1992, the Archdiocese of Chicago first developed policies and procedures to respond to allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors. These policies include education, prevention, assistance to victims, full cooperation with civil authorities, compassion for all those involved, and a review of the fitness for ministry of the person accused. ... We believe the Covenant to Protect Children is the next step toward living up to this important commitment.”

Cardinal George could not attend the announcement, but Lago said he is a “strong supporter.”

The heart and soul of the initiative is the training of the more than 25,000 adults who serve the archdiocese, Lago said. This includes bishops, priests, teachers, catechists, youth ministers, administrators, social service professionals and all volunteers who regularly work with children. “Nobody’s going to get a pass,” he said.

The archdiocesan announcement said there will be a “professional on-site training program” which all priests, religious and lay archdiocesan staff are required to complete. All volunteers in Catholic schools, parishes, agencies and social services ministries who are in any way responsible for children on a regular basis also must complete the on-site portion of the new training program. All who work directly with children also must complete a series of on-line follow-up exercises.

The training teaches adults to recognize signs of child sexual, physical and emotional abuse. “Children should not have to be responsible to protect themselves,” Slattery said, adding that abuse is pervasive in society.

Participants will learn “the signs of abuse in children (as well as) the signs that might appear in an abuser,” said Fowler.

Lago was very pointed: “We want to make sure that children understand that adults are going to make every effort to protect them if they come into a ministry in the archdiocese, and not rely on children to be their own best defense.”

“This is a major effort to ensure the safety of the children and young people in our care,” Cardinal George said in a statement. “The program fulfills the (U.S.) Bishops’ Charter, but, what is more important, it responds to the moral imperative to protect children from all harm.”

Even before the program was announced, a training session for some managers and administrators was held. Within days of the announcement, priests of the archdiocese also received training.

The Covenant to Protect Children also includes uniform screening, including criminal background checks, for all current and future staff members as well as all adult volunteers who regularly work with children and young people. A uniform code of conduct, including the prevention of child sexual abuse, will be developed and promulgated to all staff and volunteers. In addition, an education program with printed and on-line materials on preventing and reporting child sexual abuse will be conducted at every parish in the archdiocese.

In addition to serving in the archdiocese’s ministry in higher education, Slattery is the mother of six children and a foster parent with Catholic Charities for 12 years and she led campus ministry at a number of state and private universities in the Chicago area. She holds a master’s degree in education from Loyola University Chicago.

By next May, training of staff and volunteers should be completed, said Slattery. “We are a very large archdiocese,” she said, and to accomplish training of this magnitude will take that long. The next step being considered, she said, is to extend the training to parents in parishes and schools.

The Office for the Protection of Children and Youth will use the Virtus program of the National Catholic Risk Retention Group Inc., of West suburban Lisle. It will be led by a team of education and training experts in the area of prevention and proper response to child sexual abuse. Implementation of the program is anticipated to cost about $500,000, Fowler said.

The archdiocese also will broaden existing procedure to include criminal background checks on all new and current staff members. The criminal background checks will be performed by a division of Investigation Technologies, LLC., which maintains the country’s largest online criminal records database of more than 140 million records including sex offender registries.

In addition, all staff and volunteers who directly serve children on a regular basis will be subject to further screening against a Department of Children and Family Services database that tracks founded reports of child abuse and neglect in Illinois.

Those staff members or volunteers whose criminal convictions are determined by a committee to pose a threat to young people or vulnerable adults will not be permitted to continue in their positions.

Media reports quoted Barbara Blaine, a consistent critic of the archdiocese’s efforts to prevent abuse, saying that the program showed progress, but that she was concerned with a possible lack of enforcement. Blaine is president of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.