A little gripe

Anybody else out there who's had to do the sexual-abuse prevention course for their diocese? If so, maybe you can feel my pain here. Okay, it's not real pain in the grand scheme of things, just a very minor annoyance. But I'm trying to be a real blogger here and share my every inconsequential thought about stuff, so just go with it.

My diocese is doing the training program that most dioceses seem to have gone with, Virtus' "Protecting God's Children." It starts with a 3-hour class you have to attend -- drink coffee, watch a video, have the obligatory "breakout sessions" where mostly middle-aged church ladies all sit around and get teary-eyed over the story of little Bobby in the video. Pretty much what you'd expect. Mind-numbingly obvious content to these seminars, though -- explaining that child molesters groom kids, they give them gifts, make them keep secrets, etc. I mean, really, if people don't know this stuff already, what the hell planet have they been living on for the past 30 years? Didn't these people ever see that "Diff'rent Strokes" episode where Arnold ends up in the apartment with Creepy Middle-Aged Guy who gives him all the candy he wants and then shows him porn? (Didn't expect me to work Gary Coleman into this, did you?)

For several years I was helping with both CCD and the youth group at my parish. Now, I haven't worked with kids for several years now, ever since I started the adult ed. program; but back when the training started, I thought I still might help with youth group at some point in the future, so I had to make sure I complied with the guidelines and did the training in order to be able to work with kids if the need arose again.

Once you've done the 3-hour thing, then there's "follow-up" training that you complete online. They send you e-mail once a month reminding you to log on the website and complete these "training bulletins." And I thought the course itself was mind-numbingly obvious. Initially they said you'd do the follow-up training for a year. Well, I've been doing it for over 3 years now, and there's no end in sight. The really annoying thing is that these bulletins are so utterly pointless. They rehash the same things over and over and over. Not that you didn't already know this stuff to begin with. It's gotten to the point where I don't even read them anymore. I just skip to the bottom and answer the "reading comprehension" question and submit the answer -- that's how you get credit for "reading" it.

But you don't have to read it, honestly. I've never missed a single question in three years, and I stopped reading them about two years ago. Here, you try. This is the actual question for this month. I'll bet you can answer it correctly without doing any training or reading a word of any bulletin.

One of the great myths about child sexual abuse is that children lie about being abused. Both the Protecting God's Children program and the Department of Education study dispel this myth. Broadly speaking, what can we characterize about this issue from the facts about children who are sexually abused?

A) That less than 5 percent of sexual abuse allegations by children are intentionally false.
B) That approximately 94 percent of abused children never tell anyone who can do something about the abuse, or only tell a friend who they "swear" to secrecy.
C) That the majority of false accusations occur in custody cases.
D) All of the above.

Duh.