Catholic schools and VIRTUS

[Anonymous]

Can parents with children at area catholic schools please chime in on the VIRTUS requirements at your school? Who is taking the class and who is doing the additional background check? My understanding is that the VIRTUS class/background is required for parents having substantial contact with children (chaperones, room parents, etc.) but that enforcement and how broad reaching the coverage is will be at the discretion of the principal. Just looking to see how this is practiced in actual schools in our area. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Everyone with child contact had to do it at our school. Coaches, any kind of classroom volunteer, chaperones, scout leaders, etc. all had to do the class and background check. The only thing you could attend without Virtus training would be something like the spring musical as an audience member. Any type of volunteer role = Virtus.

[Anonymous]

Everyone. At our school even the one-time bake sale moms had to be VIRTUS trained. "Training" is a misnomer for sure. But I think everyone benefits from the info provided by VIRTUS.

[Anonymous]

Ditto - everyone that want to voluteer or go on field trips.

Drove my H crazy sine he has a pretty high security clearance.

[Anonymous]

Nothing in the VIRTUS training was covered when I got my secret security clearance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ditto - everyone that want to voluteer or go on field trips.

Drove my H crazy sine he has a pretty high security clearance.

Same here, drove DH nuts for same reason...
Everyone has to do it if you want to volunteer in any capacity at the school.
It's a pain, but you only have to do it once.

[Anonymous]

Strongly enforced at our school too no matter how important folks are. it didn't take long and was good info to have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing in the VIRTUS training was covered when I got my secret security clearance.

I was talking about the finger printing and background check.

But he was heavily sedated for VIRTUS class sibce he teaches graduate level classes on the subject.

[Anonymous]

Catholic schools always come up with these band aids but they are likely created by their liability carriers. The schools should focus on hiring people with character.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Catholic schools always come up with these band aids but they are likely created by their liability carriers. The schools should focus on hiring people with character.

Fine, but how do you screen for parents with character (since VIRTUS includes all parents who step foot in the classroom or cafeteria or school store, etc)?

[Anonymous]

Its a good thing. Just do it. Its only needed one time you do it. I think all schools should require it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its a good thing. Just do it. Its only needed one time you do it. I think all schools should require it.

Agreed. It may be just a "band aid" as PP said, but I'm still grateful that there is at least some level of screening done on these folks who will be with my children.

[Anonymous]

Virtus is child-safety theater. It is run by the consortium of dioceses that self-insure against liability for negligence. The Virtus program gives the consortium an argument that it has done everything possible to prevent child abuse.

The main message I got from the training was that, notwithstanding the sensational news reports about abusive priests, lay people are dangerous, and you have to be especially careful about parents. Unfortunately, the training was all anecdotal (and I have no idea whether the anecdotes were factual or merely illustrative) and there were no statistics about how much liability has been incurred due to molestation by parents, other laity, and clergy, respectively. You aren't really at the training to learn facts like that.

The background check is not very helpful, because 95% of sex offenders are first-time offenders. If there is no criminal record for 95% of child molesters, the background check can reduce child molestation by only 5% at most.

I can see doing a background check for a new teacher when the school hires her, but it is not cost-effective for volunteers who will only occasionally see students. The cost of the background check, borne in my parish by the volunteer, and the time required for the check and the training, reduce the number of volunteers. A much better safeguard, used by organizations such as Scouts, is to ensure that an adult is never in a room alone with a child.

So why doesn't the consortium of self-insuring dioceses adopt the simple rule against unattended one-on-one? My guess is that it's hard to enforce and document compliance with a rule like that. It's much easier for the bishops to contract for this certification program (yes, the Virtus training company is making a good buck) so they have mountains of evidence of how diligent they are in trying to prevent child molestation. Also, the program is useful for giving every parent-volunteer exposure to the notion that the real problem is from parents and other lay people.

After the training, I had the very depressing feeling that the Virtus program is designed by lawyers for the benefit of lawyers and their diocesan clients. I doubt whether it helps children, and it's certainly a pain for parents.

[Anonymous]

The VIRTUS training, along with the background check, along with the Diocesan rules for safeguarding children are meant to work together to make parent volunteers, teachers, staff, etc. more aware of the behaviors employed by a child molester. If you are more aware of odd or prohibited behaviors, you are more likely to call somebody out on it. People who want to molest kids operate best in a cone of silence. And, lucky for all of us, there are different kinds of molesters. There are predators who seek out specific victims, groom them, and molest them. There are opportunistic molesters who have no plan but the opportunity presents itself or they don't have to work very hard to make it happen. Simple things like an adult is not supposed to go alone into an area where kids might be changing clothes (for a school play or for field day or for a field trip). A 12 year old kid might object to somebody else's dad in the locker room with them, but a 6 year old might not. So if you have had the training and read the rules, when Chester the Molester roles his eyes, looks at his cell phone, smiles, and says, "Hey, I am going to go tell them to get a move on. We don't want to be late/to have them miss all the fun," you know to say, "Oh, hey Chester, remember that dumb video! We can't go in there. I don't want any of the boys saying something to one of their parents and it's all of a sudden a big problem...here...'HEY, BOYS! PUT THE PEDAL TO THE METAL!! YOU ARE MISSING THE EGG TOSS!!,' see, Chester? All done." Chester now knows you are on to him and he won't try that shit around you. And you know to keep an eye on Chester.

I work in the criminal justice system and I deal with sex offenders frequently. The combination of the training, the rules, and the background checks are good tools for lay people to use because they make an offenders behavior more apt to stand out and, more importantly, less likely for someone to attribute good motives to potentially dangerous behavior. And frankly, that is what makes a molester able to operate, adults thinking, "hey that doesn't seem right, but I am too embarrassed or too afraid of offending someone by speaking up." When the rules are clear and everybody is supposed to follow them, it makes it easier to speak up.

[Anonymous]

In many states the law requires background checks and fingerprinting for anyone that might volunteer or do work of any kind on school property while the children are in school. Some years back the phone company and all other venders were required to have all of their employees screened that might work on a school campus in the state of Florida. They pass those kinds of laws and it cost schools a lot of money even though I do not know of one case of these types of people having one on one contact with students.