Kristin Leandro
Dara Perreira, the human resources director of the diocese of Honolulu, had been fretting a few months ago about how hard it would be to fill the newly open position of director of safe environment. She needed someone with solid managerial experience and the heart of a social worker who could ensure that the Catholic Church in Hawaii was a place protected from sexual abuse and harassment. It was a one-of-a-kind position that needed a one-of-a-kind person.
At the same time, Kristin Leandro, a lifelong Catholic with graduate and post-graduate degrees in social work, had learned that her department at the Hawaii Medical Service Association, where she was a strategic planning manager, had been eliminated. She either had to find another position with HMSA where she had worked for 24 years, or look elsewhere.
Seeing this as an opportunity to pursue her first passion, social work, Leandro decided to try elsewhere.
She first explored Catholic Charities Hawaii and then turned to the Diocese of Honolulu website. There she found Perreira’s job posting for a safe environment director.
As if to validate this development, Leandro, at a class reunion, ran into Karen Kung, her fellow 1983 graduate at Sacred Hearts Academy and the diocese’s previous safe environment coordinator.
Everything came together nicely.
On Sept 8, Leandro brought her years of management experience, her strategic planning skills, her enthusiasm for social services and her love of children into her new second floor office at St. Stephen Diocesan Center. From there she will oversee the implementation in Hawaii of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” the rules mandated by the U.S. bishops after the clergy sex abuse crisis exploded a dozen years ago.
Here is a list of some of her tasks:
To ensure that church employees and volunteers who work with minors are trained and screened according to safe environment laws and procedures.
To assist the clergy office in coordinating background checks and safe environment training of all priests, deacons and seminarians.
To help religious orders, private schools and other non-diocesan Catholic organizations in Hawaii comply with the charter.
To ensure that the diocese meets the audit requirements of the National Office for Child and Youth Protection.
To work with the bishop to guarantee that any clergy who have abused minors are properly monitored.
To maintain regular training of designated safe environment liaisons in each parish and school.
To work with diocesan attorneys and insurance carriers to make certain the diocese is appropriately mitigating risk.
To collaborate with Catholic Charities Hawaii, sex-abuse organizations and enforcement agencies to further strengthen the safe environment program.
Leandro lives in Kaimuki and attends Newman Center/Holy Trinity Parish. She is a full 13-year, kindergarten through high school, Sacred Hearts Academy graduate.
The new director has been busy getting herself acquainted with the diocese, its offices and department heads. After one week on the job, she told the Hawaii Catholic Herald, “I love it.”
Her biggest challenge, “based on what I hear so far,” she said, will be “helping people understand the value of the program” whose limelight may have faded a bit.
But it’s a challenge, she said, that “speaks to my heart and what I feel passionate about.”
