Hope collection

How can Catholic Church ministries globally improve their safeguarding capabilities to effectively prevent and respond to child sexual abuse?

Practical Advice/Tips for Practitioners

• Enhance policy awareness
  Regularly update and communicate safeguarding policies clearly to all church members, ensuring laypeople are well informed about reporting and prevention procedures.

• Build role-specific confidence
  Provide targeted training that builds practical safeguarding skills, particularly among clergy and safeguarding officers, to boost confidence in preventing and responding to abuse.

• Strengthen positive attitudes
  Ensure that all roles within the Church — from clergy to volunteers — have clearly defined safeguarding responsibilities. This helps build a shared understanding and accountability, especially in contexts where safeguarding is seen as someone else’s responsibility.

• Promote continuous learning
  Encourage ongoing professional development in safeguarding practices, especially among tertiary students and new church leaders, to maintain high confidence and knowledge levels.

• Contextualise training globally
  Adapt safeguarding training and materials to reflect local cultural contexts, specifically in countries lacking historical inquiries or comprehensive safeguarding reforms.

• Engage the laity in safeguarding culture
  Actively involve laypeople in safeguarding initiatives through parish-level workshops and community discussions. Their lower scores across all domains suggest they need more support to understand their role and feel empowered to act.

Abstract

Background: In the wake of historical sexual abuse across the Catholic Church globally, the Church continues to develop policies and processes to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse, including supporting the skills, knowledge, and confidence of members of the Church. Objective: We investigated the safeguarding capabilities of a range of people with different roles within Catholic Church ministries in various countries. Participants and setting: Our 184 participants included lay people, religious men and women, school staff, safeguarding officers and tertiary students associated with the Catholic Church. Data were collected across seven different countries. Methods: We measured the awareness, confidence, attitudes, and knowledge of participants and examined differences between participants in different roles within the Church and different countries through General Linear Models. Results: We found varying levels of awareness, confidence, attitudes, and knowledge regarding sexual abuse prevention and safeguarding. We pinpointed the significant differences in three of these domains (confidence, attitudes, and knowledge) both between people with different roles in the church worldwide, but also between the countries from which participants came from. Conclusions: We found that people in various countries and roles within the Church are at different stages of their safeguarding journey. Some are still understanding their roles (attitudes), some are still learning about how it is operationalised (awareness), and others are acquiring skills that will prepare them for enacting safeguarding policies and practices (confidence).

Full paper access

Russell, Douglas, Higgins, Daryl John, Harris, Lottie, Rinaldi, Angela, Pound, Marcus and Zollner, Hans. (2024). The safeguarding capability of adults in Catholic Church ministries : A global perspective. Child Abuse and Neglect. 153, p. Article 106801.

Contact the researcher

Douglas Russell
Douglas.Russell@acu.edu.au

Learn more about Douglas Russell’s research