Lynn Blake is one of thousands of Catholic parishioners in this city in upstate New York who just want to help their church.
So why are they being forced to take part in sexual abuse education classes and allow investigators to sift through their backgrounds as if they were ex-convicts?
"It's ironic that we have to go through this training because of some priests and their heinous acts," says Blake, a 43-old-mother of two who volunteers at St. Teresa of Avila School in Albany.
The clergy sexual abuse scandal that erupted nearly two years ago is forcing not just priests but also employees and volunteers in Roman Catholic dioceses across the United States to undergo background checks and attend workshops on how to prevent future cases of molested children.
The moves are part of a new policy adopted last year by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to the crisis, which began when court documents showed that Boston church officials reassigned known pedophiles to other parishes or left them in ministry.
Since then, thousands of people across the country have filed lawsuits claiming they were sexually abused by priests. In Boston alone, the church has agreed to pay $85 million to settle more than 500 such claims.
'TREATED LIKE CRIMINALS'
The Archdiocese of New York recently announced it has started conducting background checks for bishops, priests and permanent deacons in an attempt to find accusations of sexual abuse buried in their pasts.
But beginning in November, archdiocese employees and volunteers involved with children will have to be screened by ChoicePoint, a leading provider of identification and credential verification services based in Atlanta. Sexual abuse awareness workshops will follow, said archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling.
One option available to dioceses seeking sexual abuse prevention workshops is the Virtus educational program, part of an Illinois-based insurance company called The National Catholic Risk Retention Group.
Virtus, a Latin word that means valor, moral strength, excellence and worth, began in 1997 as a program offered by priests. So far it has been used in nearly half of the 200 U.S. Catholic dioceses, says program director Jack McCalmon.
In Albany alone, 3,000 people have attended Virtus sexual abuse prevention sessions this fall. Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard said in a recent letter to area Catholic school principals that the training courses were well-received.
But not every parishioner is happy with having to participate.
Blake says the program is "inconvenient for working moms" and she resents having to attend because of the actions of a few bad priests -- sentiments echoed by Theresa Owens.
"Why am I being asked to sit through this when I don't feel responsible for it?" says Owens, a mother of five. "We are being gracious and trusting to give them our Social Security (news - web sites) numbers for the background checks, but I feel like we are treated like criminals."
KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE
At a recent session in Albany, a leader opened the Virtus workshop by telling some 100 parents that they were not being punished for the acts of others and then showed them two short videos.
The first video talked about the widespread problem of sexual abuse in society with only a minor focus on the role of priests as child molesters.
Two abusers were featured but they were not priests. One family was shown discussing their daughter's abuse by a parish priest. Otherwise, priests were portrayed in a positive light, baptizing babies and consecrating communion.
In a second video, a priest discussed how Catholics can stop sexual abuse, telling them that they have a moral responsibility to protect God's children from sexual predators.
Workshop participants were told that one in eight men and one in four women say they were molested as children -- some 40 million people in the United States. Most victims, they were informed, go on to battle drug and alcohol abuse as well as depression.
During a group discussion afterward, one mother said she felt the video should have offered more of an apology from the church for the actions of abusive priests.
Other parents later complained that the whole experience was making it difficult to heal the wounds opened by the abuse scandal.
One mother, who wished to remain anonymous, says she was upset to find that the awareness program was focused on sex abusers in the general population when the problem within the church involves priests.
Owens says that despite her unease over the background check and having to participate in the awareness program, she does see some value in the new procedures.
"A positive thing about the program is that I will know what to look for so that my children will be safe," she says.