Nonprofit took kickbacks instead of helping priests' sex abuse victims, lawsuit claims

By Reuven Blau
New York Daily News
January 24, 2017

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/group-cash-helping-priests-abuse-victims-suit-article-1.2954266

Gretchen Hammond is suing Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

A new lawsuit says SNAP took kickbacks in exchange for referring potential clients to lawyers.

SNAP members protests in September 2010 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

A nonprofit established to help victims sexually abused by priests routinely gets financial payments for referring cases to attorneys seeking to sue the Catholic Church, a new lawsuit alleges.

A former employee of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, sounded the alarm — saying the group fired her in February 2013 after she complained to bosses about the collusion.

“Attorneys and SNAP base their strategy not on the best interests of the survivor, but on what will generate the most publicity and fund-raising opportunities for SNAP,” says the suit, filed in Chicago Federal Court.

The fired staffer, Gretchen Hammond, was hired in 2011 to do fund-raising for the Chicago-based group, according to the suit.

She became suspicious after she saw a roster of lawyers who were making contributions of $20,000 to $30,000 to the national advocacy group.

“They’d come out of nowhere,” Hammond told the Daily News on Tuesday.

Later, she was accidentally copied on an email from David Clohessy, SNAP’s executive director, to an attorney inquiring about the next payment.

When she asked about the email, SNAP honchos told her to ignore it and suggested she move on, according to Hammond.

She continued to investigate on her own — and downloaded records onto a flash drive which she brought home to review.

A SNAP volunteer came to her house to retrieve the drive, but she never revealed that the information had also been copied onto another drive, according to the lawsuit.

She was canned two days later, Hammond said.

The lawsuit does not name any lawyers who gave money to the group.

But Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota attorney who has represented victims of clergy sex abuse in the past, said he has made donations to the organization.

“I have supported SNAP and a lot of other organizations that help survivors throughout the country, unapologetically,” he told the Chicago Tribune.

“The allegation is explosive because it’s unethical,” he continued. “I’ve never done it, nor would I ever do it.”

SNAP’s website says it tries to help sex abuse victims and works to prevent further assaults through advocacy and education.

But the lawsuit charges that’s not the case.

“In reality, SNAP is a commercial operation motivated by its directors’ and officers’ personal and ideological animus against the Catholic Church,” the suit says.

The organization also does not employ any grief counselors and ignores calls from victims seeking that assistance, the suit alleges.

And SNAP “squanders funds meant for survivors,” the legal papers say.

As proof, Hammond says she oversaw a fund-raising drive to pay for SNAP’s trip to The Hague in the Netherlands, where the group filed charges against Pope Benedict XVI in the International Criminal Court.

But the money was used “to pay for lavish hotels and other extravagant travel expenses for its leadership,” the suit says.

“SNAP also uses funds meant to assist survivors on its own legal troubles,” according to the complaint.

SNAP President Barbara Blaine defended the advocacy group.

“The allegations are not true,” she said in a statement. “This will be proven in court. SNAP leaders are now, and always have been, devoted to following the SNAP mission: to help victims heal and to prevent further sexual abuse.”