Abuse Inquiries and Response Policies

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct Policy

Response Policy

A national policy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, one jurisdiction within Eastern Orthodoxy under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, governing the investigation and resolution of sexual misconduct complaints against clergy. The Holy Eparchial Synod of the Archdiocese put the original policy into effect in 2000 and revised it in June 2022, more than two decades later, to a stated zero tolerance standard applying broadly across the Archdiocese and its related entities, missions and institutions, adding a confidential third party hotline operated independently of the Archdiocese itself.

Facts

Inquiry Profile

Kind of Record

Response Policy 1

Jurisdiction

United States (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America) 1

Commissioned By

Holy Eparchial Synod, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America 1

Publication Year

2000 1

Documented Findings

Key Finding

National policy on investigating and resolving clergy sexual misconduct complaints, in effect since 2000; revised June 2022 to a zero tolerance standard applying across the Archdiocese and its related entities, with an independent confidential hotline added. 1

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A Policy Twenty-Two Years in Its First Revision

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America put a national policy on clergy sexual misconduct into effect in 2000, governing how complaints against clergy would be investigated and resolved across its parishes and institutions. It was, at the time, a comparatively early instrument: several of the Catholic reforms this atlas already documents, including the Dallas Charter, followed it by two years.

The policy stood in its original form for more than two decades. In June 2022, the Holy Eparchial Synod revised it, stating a zero tolerance standard for sexual misconduct or abuse by clergy and extending the policy's reach explicitly to every related Archdiocesan entity, mission and institution rather than parishes alone. The revision also added a confidential third party hotline, operated independently of the Archdiocese itself, structured to route complaints to both clergy and lay leadership at once rather than through a single internal channel.

Eastern Orthodoxy has no single governing body that could adopt a policy on behalf of every autocephalous church at once; the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America's policy binds its own jurisdiction, not Orthodoxy as a whole. That structural fact, a communion of self-governing churches rather than one hierarchy, is itself part of what this policy's scope has to be read against: it is one jurisdiction's own instrument, adopted and later strengthened by that jurisdiction alone.

Connections