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Unmasking "Safe Environment" Programs

20 Points of Objection

1.  Parents have not requested "safe environment" programs; therefore, they violate the law of subsidiarity.

2.  "Safe environment" programs undermine the mission of marriage and the family.

3.  They undermine the vocation of the clergy to focus on the supernatural mission of saving souls by teaching and sanctifying.

4.  "Safe environment" programs defy Church teaching regarding modesty and classroom sex education.

5. "Safe environment" programs violate the innocence of children, and traumatize them by immersing children into a world of perversion and danger.

6.  "Safe environment" program desensitize and sexualize children, making children an easier prey for child molestation. The programs themselves are immodest, discussing in public (the classroom), a private, delicate, intimate sphere.

7. "Safe environment" programs operate with the teacher having little or no knowledge of individual difference in children. Some children in the classroom may already have been abused and are undergoing therapy.

8.  "Safe environment" programs present a “Pandora's Box” of potentially harmful classroom questions and discussions which may make known private information about the personal, private lives of individuals and family members.

9.  The programs present subject matter comprehensively, rather than through a parental method of using natural, actual life experiences to teach gently certain things.

10. "Safe environment" programs present topics which pique a child's curiosity and encourage experimentation, because that is the way children learn - progressing from an idea to the concrete.

11. They falsely believe that little children can discern and make judgments leading to identifying the predator from the friend. This unnecessarily burdens childhood with responsibilities children should not have and cannot do.

12. "Safe environment" programs insist on children reporting abuses, (hence the necessity of knowledge of clinical terms) and then being cross-examined on intimate matters, which can cause additional trauma.

13. The programs seek to minimize the U.S. Bishops' risk by seeking settlement before court. Bishops can “claim” that the “safe environment” program a child has taken should have fore-warned the child; the child should have known better.

14. "Safe environment" programs portray almost anyone as a potential abuser. This undermines family trust - even teaching that the parent or sibling can be abusers. The role of the school is not to undermine the role of the family. The Jay Report found that homosexual priests were responsible for 80% of church related abuse. This fact is largely ignored in "safe environment" programs. Authors of these programs disregard the Jay Report findings and place blame on everyone else.

15. The origins of many "safe environment" programs are secular- of the Planned Parenthood milieu . "Talk About Touching" developed from a group which originally sought to legalize prostitution. The Programs have also hidden political agendas such as feminism, homosexuality, and gun control.

16. The programs are reflective of the Pelagian heresy. That is, they are self -help programs. They ignore the real Safe Environment inherent in living the ordinary life of a Catholic under the Providential gaze of God. What is needed is a focus of fostering true Faith - complete with the scapular, holy water, prayer and the rosary, our guardian angels, etc.

17. "Safe environment" programs take time away from academic subjects, including Christian Doctrine.

18.  Measurements of reported success are questionable. One can measure increase in knowledge, but what about the accompanying impure thoughts? What criteria measure the averted disasters? What criteria measure the actual child abuse incidents? Measurement of numbers of child abuse incidents can be calculated in communities with "safe environment" programs, but how can cause and effect be correlated?

19. The so called "good" of these programs and the numbers of satisfied parents can never justify the bad means - the "safe environment" classroom school programs themselves.

20. The name, “safe environment” is a lie. These programs are not safe or good for children. They traumatize and sexualize our children. They must be vigorously resisted.