Attorney Richard Hammar was among the first to caution Protestant churches about the need to protect kids and use screening and selection processes for the people who work with children and youth in their care.
When he crafted the Reducing the Risk abuse-prevention awareness training program in the early 1990s, Hammar recommended a five-step checklist.
Three of those steps—a written application, interview, and reference checks—occurred before a person even set foot in a Sunday school classroom or youth gathering.
Over time, Hammar has expanded the checklist to 14 steps.
He also has refined it, based on new research, new best practices, and the ways law enforcement and courts have weighed in on the subject.
One example: requiring applicants to provide reference checks from institutions, rather than personal acquaintances.
FBI Insights
For years, personal references seemed adequate. Churches, already scrambling to find eligible volunteers and staff, could ask applicants for the names of two people and quickly contact them to confirm the applicants’ suitability to work with children and youth.
Then Hammar came across research from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
As he explained in an issue of Church Law & Tax Report, “(u)sually, church leaders are not familiar with personal references, and so they are of limited value. Further, the FBI profile on pedophiles states that the only adult friends of pedophiles tend to be other pedophiles. This further diminishes the value of personal references.”
From that point forward, Hammar recommended institutional references, not personal ones.
What Is an Institutional Reference?
An institutional reference simply means a reference provided by someone at an institution where the applicant has previously worked with children or youth.
It might be another church’s children’s ministry. It might be a youth sports program. It might be a school.
