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VIRTUS protects youths and adults

George Goss | Catholic Herald Multimedia Journalist

virtus-graphic_webWhen Father
Michael J. Dobbins suggested that one of his parishioners take the VIRTUS
training — which is required for all employees in the Diocese of Arlington, and
79 other dioceses, to help prevent, identify and act on abuse — he did not
expect that it would have immediate results.

“I saw how
effective it was, firsthand,” said Father Dobbins, pastor of St. John Bosco
Church in Woodstock.

VIRTUS takes
its name from the Latin word for courage and was born amid the need to better safeguard youths in parish
schools and churches. 

The program,
which is the brainchild of the National Catholic Risk Retention Group Inc.,
drills down on five key areas in protecting youths from sexual abusers: knowing
the warning signs of abuse; limiting unsupervised access to children; reviewing
programs involving children; noticing children’s behavioral patterns and if
there are dramatic shifts; as well as voicing concerns to others.

“I was
serving at a parish in Northern Virginia at the time, and I had encouraged a
mom there to take the VIRTUS class because she loved to volunteer, but still
needed to take that training in order to do so in the church,” said Father
Dobbins.

As it turned
out, the training she received alerted her to behavioral warning signs that
indicated her daughter was being abused.

“After taking
the course she went back home, sat her daughter down and asked, ‘Has anybody
been touching you in a way that is not normal, especially in your private
area?’ ” said Father Dobbins. “And the daughter said, ‘Yes.’ ”

According to
Crispin Montelione, associate director of the VIRTUS programs, it is this
kind of rapid reaction resulting from the training that survivors of abuse
often wish they had.

“Survivors
have said that they wish that their parents had been through training like this
20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago because it might have prevented their abuses from
starting or continuing,” said Montelione.

According to
Chanel Marquis, a diocesan VIRTUS training facilitator and compliance officer
for child and adult protection at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Triangle,
providing that extra level of security is not just to protect youths, but
adults as well.

“We are all
vulnerable. A lot of people have the misconception that we are just looking out
for kids and that nothing can happen to us adults or seniors, but the truth is
that it can happen to any of us,” said Marquis.

The key point
that she emphasizes when teaching VIRTUS is the importance of talking about
abuse.

“We all have
to come together to talk about abuse. If we don’t then we are just burying our
heads in the sand and hoping that it will go away. We need to arm ourselves
with the necessary information. You have to work at it every day, it doesn’t
stop,” Marquis said.

Deacon
Marques Silva, director of the diocesan Office of Child Protection and Safety,
said that the discussion element is primary to the training portion as well.
Throughout the diocese, all new hires need to set aside four hours for VIRTUS
training: screening a video and then talking about it.

“We
understand that for someone going through VIRTUS to process it and begin to
enculturate and absorb the material you have to start talking about it,” Silva
said. “We know that the communities that start talking about sex abuse, the
instances of it dramatically drop.

Although Montelione
was unable to provide statistics on the effectiveness of VIRTUS at preventing
abuse, Silva said that there are signs it is having a dramatic effect.

“One instance
of abuse is one too many,” he said. “What we do know from the information that
the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown shows us, is
that since the implementation of diocesan procedures and safe environment
training, instances of abuse by clergy have significantly dropped. But we must
remain vigilant.”

For Father Dobbins,
that one experience of his parishioner finding out her daughter was abused was
enough to prove its value to him.

He recounted
that when asked, the parishioner’s daughter said that it was her own father
committing the abuse, an allegation that was confirmed upon further questioning
by the police.

“This program
was able to stop that girl’s nightmare, at least from the perspective of being
victimized,” said Father Dobbins. “We need this. We absolutely need this.”

 

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