Archdiocese turns background checks over to private company

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati, which has been running criminal background checks on clergy, employees and volunteers since the priest child sexual abuse scandal first broke two decades ago, announced Wednesday it’s turning the screenings over to an Ohio company in 2014, reducing the costs by more than half.

The 19-county archdiocese, which includes the Miami Valley, will use SELECTiON.COM of Cincinnati, described by the archdiocese as a “national, Catholic faith-based background check company,” to screen people using its proprietary database. Presently, the checks are run by archdiocesan employees using the systems of the FBI and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification.

Archdiocese spokesman Dan Andriacco said the new system will produce results faster and allow volunteers to apply online without having to be fingerprinted. The cost of the screening, typically borne by the applicant or the parish or parochial school filling the position, will be $25, instead of the current $58 for the BCII and FBI checks, and the company will repeat the checks quarterly without additional charge to catch any new criminal offenses, Andriacco said.

The archdiocese has been testing the company’s system since January by having SELECTiON.COM duplicate the checks done by staff using the existing system. “We actually found some people with criminal backgrounds (under the company’s system) who were missed by the BCII and FBI checks,” Andriacco said.

“This is just an attempt to continue to provide the safest environment possible for children, but do (the screening) faster, less expensively and more conveniently for the volunteer,” he said.

Formed in 1991, SELECTiON.COM calls itself “one of the nation’s leading providers of pre-employment background screening services.”

The Cincinnati Archdiocese serves nearly 500,000 Catholics in 213 parishes and 113 Catholic primary and secondary schools. Andriacco said the archdiocese performed 7,405 background checks in the fiscal year ending June 30, and more than 85,500 since it began requiring background checks in 1993.

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