Of Interest...

Thursday December 6, 2007

from the New York Post

December 4, 2007—A new coloring book being distributed by the Archdiocese of New York teaches children to protect themselves from adults – including, apparently, priests – who cannot stay within the lines.

Although priests are never explicitly the villains of “Being Friends, Being Safe, Being Catholic,” the female guardian angel who narrates the morality tale warns on one page that an altar boy should never remain alone in a room with any adult unless the door is open.

“If a child and an adult happen to be alone, someone should know where they are, and the door should be open or have a big window in it,” the smiling angel says in the panel as she floats above an altar boy donning his church smock, apparently in a church sacristy, as a man who seems to be a priest looks at him.

The coloring books have been distributed to 300 schools and 400 religious groups.

Edward Mechmann, director of the archdiocese’s Safe Environment program, which commissioned the books, said church officials were wary of targeting priests directly.
“We are in the business of dealing with kids, and we don’t want to rob them of their innocence,” he said. “We wanted to be fair to the priests so we weren’t stigmatizing them.”

But advocates of those who have been abused by priests complain that the church must more clearly point the finger at the most likely perpetrators preying on children.

“Too much is made of the creepy stranger, when predators are actually most often the adults we have taught kids are trustworthy,” said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “It does seem as though church officials are still reluctant to admit that, in fact, their own clergy can be – and are – predators.”
In the book, after a series of dire warnings about strangers bearing gifts and online predators wishing to meet children, priests are finally mentioned – but as part of a word search for a list of adults that can be trusted.

Even a comic book aimed at older kids avoids a clear indictment of a member of the clergy. In that story, a parent at the school preys on female students.

Advocates said they were not questioning the motives of the archdiocese, headed by Edward Cardinal Egan, but said that church officials were so careful, they missed the heart of the matter.

“No matter how you try to teach children about child sex abuse, if you don’t point out that it is the priest, the teacher, the Boy Scout leader, who have a position of real power and trust over children, you have missed the point,” said Michael Dowd, a lawyer who has represented hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse.

The coloring book was first reported in Newsweek magazine.
jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

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