Year’s End and an Empty Tank

National Survivor Advocates Coalition
December 31, 2013

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/

In this space, we try to be clear, declarative and not overly burdensome.

We hope we are the same today with a message that we deliberately don’t make frequently.

As this year’s end, we are running on a financial tank that is near empty.

If you like what we do and would like to see us keep doing it and have more breadth in the doing of it, and see it in more places and spheres, we are asking for your financial help if that is a possibility for you.

We are all volunteers in the NSAC effort but we do have expenses.

It takes money to distribute NSAC News. We use Constant Contact and get the best deal we can by paying for as large a chunk of time as we can to get the best discounts.

Our intrepid publisher, Steve Sheehan, is at the task of preparing and distributing NSAC News in the wee hours of every Monday through Friday morning – and we salute him.

NSAC News is a free service of a news briefing delivered directly to your Inbox designed to keep you informed of the news of the crisis in a compact, efficient and useful way while not overwhelming or depressing you with what is a heavy and sad business, to say the least.

We have a website that we’d like to expand with more features to get the message out more broadly as more people on the planet tune in to the need for the protection of children and the need for justice for the survivors. Technology takes money.

We went to Kansas City to take a visible, open and strong stand in our call for convicted Bishop Robert Finn to resign.

We wanted to go back but lack of funds prevented it.

We sponsor a gathering reception at the SNAP conference to smooth the way for the many survivors who have reached into the depths of their reserves and found the strength and courage to become public about what they carry as a daily burden.

Going to a conference alone can be a lonely and sometimes daunting experience for many but especially so when the conference is about sexual abuse when rape or sodomy has happened to you – and happened at the hands of a religious authority figure. We try to ease the fear factor in that entry point to the weekend and provide a welcoming connecting threshold for the weekend and all the good that SNAP conferences hold and unfold.

We began NSAC and continue it in motion because we believe deeply that the survivors should not be alone.

In fact we believe that Catholics and men and women of goodwill have a duty and obligation to see to it that they are not alone.

Yet it must be said that daily the survivors themselves continue to carry the burden of being the major voice for the protection of children and justice for survivors in a world that can become educated with nary more than a flick on a finger, the tap of a computer mouse, the reading of depositions.

The gulf between knowledge and action remains substantial.

We believe that men and women in Roman Catholic church pews and in the pews of other denominations and men and women of goodwill in society must stand against the evil of sexual abuse, against the perpetrators, of course, but also against the accomplices to abusers who cover up sexual abuse and the human roadblocks against the reform of the statutes of limitations that allow those who committed abuse and those who abetted and abet them by cover up to remain beyond the reach of the justice system in criminal and civil law as well as canon law.

There is an era of good feeling bubbling up in the Roman Catholic Church these days due to the election of Pope Francis.

We believe that many people in the pews as well as others in the general population think that the issues of the crisis will be solved or at least nicely and politely shelved by that good feeling.

We believe the opposite. We believe that the new year will bring tougher times in this fight. We believe that is foreshadowed by the court ruling regarding Monsignor Lynn.

We believe that this is no time to let down a guard.

No time to stop what we’ve been doing.

No time to stop planning to do more.

No time to stop doing more.

If you think like we do and are able to help, the donate button is available on this website and with every edition of NSAC News. If you would like to support NSAC without using PayPal or credit cards, please make a check payable to NSAC News and send to:

NSAC

PO Box 41013

Dayton, OH 45441-0013

We thank you for your support of NSAC News and NSAC’s projects and your support of the survivors in the many known and unknown ways you do it.