PORTLAND – The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland is in full compliance with national protocols set up five years ago to safeguard children, the diocese announced Thursday in an annual audit.

The diocese was one of about a dozen across the country that volunteered to be part of the first expanded audit, which included parishes and schools.

“An examination at that level is where we can really determine if our policies are working,” Bishop Richard J. Malone said Thursday. “The churches and schools are where children are on a regular basis. I applaud this initiative to check compliance more thoroughly so that parishioners can be assured their children are safe.”

The audits were completed in September and the bishop’s office in Portland recently received the results, according to the press release.

One auditor’s sole responsibility was to visit or call parishes to verify that procedures are in place that ensure only trained adults who have been through background checks are working with children and vulnerable adults, according to diocesan spokeswoman Sue Bernard.

St. Thomas Catholic Church in Madawaska, St. John Catholic Church and All Saints School, both in Bangor, were audited by telephone, she said. On-site audits of four other parishes and two schools in Maine were conducted.

Although the phone interviews lacked face-to-face contact, the Rev. Richard McLaughlin, pastor of St. John’s, said the fact that the auditor was a former FBI investigator with years of experience more than made up for it.

“He did have the advantage of interviewing a number of people and not at the same time,” he said. “We didn’t know what he would be asking and he could see if our answers jibed or not. This was a trained investigator who would not be settling for the first answer he got.”

As a parish priest, McLaughlin said that auditing parishes and schools in addition to the diocese also is a good way to test how the program is being implemented and working on a local level.

“It’s a way to see how successful are we in getting volunteers to comply and what practical problems we are running into,” he said. “Those things are really important. A program can be really good in theory and not work on a local level.

“It’s easy to say we’re going to implement a program in which every volunteer and any person who works in any way with child or vulnerable adults must complete the program, undergo a background check and sign a code of ethics on a yearly basis,” McLaughlin continued. “How we go about getting people to do that and make training available to people with such mixed schedules as volunteers who already are giving up a lot of their time and their privacy is not easy.”

Two years ago the diocese was found not in compliance with some of the 13 areas included in the Catholic Church’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, commonly known as the Dallas Charter.

It was found to be in full compliance last year.

Among other things, the charter mandates:

. Reporting all allegations of sexual abuse of minors by church representatives to civil authorities and encouraging victims to do the same.

. Investigating all complaints of abuse of minors in a thorough and timely manner.

. Removing clergy or other church representatives who have sexually abused minors.

. Requiring safe environmental programs that include abuse prevention training for volunteers who work with minors and all church personnel, offering awareness programs for minors, and implementing measures that prevent a minor from being alone with a church employee or representative.

. Completing background checks on volunteers who work with children and all church personnel, including priests.

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

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