By Bob D'Ambrosio and Kim Kerr

You never thought it could happen — at least not at your church. The color drains from your face when you receive an unexpected visit from a police investigator. He informs you that a report of sexual misconduct has been made concerning one of your volunteers. Dreadful information quickly reveals that a volunteer in the youth program hid a history of sexual offenses in another state and you never knew about it until it was too late.

The days of thinking that nothing like this could ever happen at your church have long since passed. As a result, the subject of background checking has become an important issue for churches. Are background checks really worth the expense? How can you get your volunteers to see the need without offending their good intentions? And how do you get started?

Churches weren’t asking these questions just a few years ago. But the recent high-profile attention paid to clergy sexual misconduct has forced the church to ask the questions and to act with diligence and consistency to protect the people it serves.

Volunteers commit incidents
A survey conducted by Church Law and Tax Report found that church volunteers commit 50 percent of all incidents of sexual abuse in churches, paid staff commit 30 percent and other children commit 20 percent. Many risk-consultant professionals agree that the church and other nonprofit groups are the predator’s last refuge. Perpetrators look for access to vulnerable children, youth, senior citizens and people with disabilities. If predators know that an organization uses a screening process they usually move on to easier prey.

The Volunteers for Children Act signed in 1998 states that you can be sued for negligent hiring if you have an incident with one of your volunteers or employees and did not conduct a national search to look for a previous criminal record. Anyone, paid or unpaid, who works with children at your church should be on your list for mandatory background checks.

So how do you implement the process of background checking? Here are some steps to get started...

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