A reader writes:<\/p>\n
\n\nOur Catholic school has required parents to complete a ‘"Safe Enviroment" training for the past couple of years. I have had very mixed feelings about the program. I completely agree that volunteers who work regularly with children should be trained in recognizing and preventing child abuse (the need for which was exemplified in your recent post on laypeople who don’t report sexual abuse). On the other hand, the programs seem designed more to protect the diocese than to meet the parents’ and children’s needs. <\/p>\n
This year, however, our diocese has begun charging parents for the mandatory on-line training session, and I’ve jumped from ambiguity to full-fledged outrage. I find it absolutely obscene that the Church is charging parents for programs that stem more from ecclesial wrongdoing than children’s needs. I don’t care that the fee is only $10 or that the cost of the training program would eventually trickle down to us as parishioners or school parents anyway. There’s something about paying this fee that makes my blood boil. <\/p>\n
Before I hit full protest mode, I’d love to hear about what is happening in other dioceses. Have other folks run into this issue? Am I over-reacting here? Also, I’d be curious to see if anyone is familiar with the training offered by shieldthevulnerable.org, which is a service of Lawroom.com.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Well, folks? Any experiences with this?<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A reader writes: Our Catholic school has required parents to complete a ‘"Safe Enviroment" training for the past couple of years. I have had very mixed feelings about the program. I completely agree that volunteers who work regularly with children should be trained in recognizing and preventing child abuse (the need for which was exemplified…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
Protection Racket? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/protection-racket.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Protection Racket? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A reader writes: Our Catholic school has required parents to complete a ‘"Safe Enviroment" training for the past couple of years. I have had very mixed feelings about the program. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}