ALABAMA
Mobile Register
By KRISTEN CAMPBELL
Religion Reporter
On Wednesday, about four months after the Most Rev. Oscar H. Lipscomb told members of a Montgomery parish that their former priest had admitted to a history of child sexual abuse, he released the archdiocese’s new child protection policy to reporters from the Gulf Coast.
The 64-page document, presented to reporters in Montgomery on Tuesday, substantially augments the two-page sexual misconduct policy implemented in 1995.
It stipulates that most archdiocesan personnel and volunteers who work with people younger than 19 must complete criminal background checks and educational training. The document also outlines civil and internal reporting requirements that personnel — from priests and deacons to contract workers and lay volunteers — are to follow.
But the Very Rev. Michael L. Farmer, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Mobile, cautioned those assembled for a noon news conference at St. Dominic Catholic Church against seeing the procedures as foolproof.
