Abuse Survivors Urge Diocese to Add Seven Priests to Credibly Accused List

By Mark Bliss
Southeast Missourian
January 17, 2019

http://admin.bishop-accountability.org/blog/mt.cgi

Two members of a priest-abuse survivors group called Wednesday for the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese to place an additional seven priests on its list of those credibly accused of molesting children.

The plea came from Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) members David Clohessy of St. Louis and Larry Antonsen of Chicago as they stood outside St. Mary Cathedral in Cape Girardeau, holding signs listing the names of the seven priests.

"These are all priests who were ordained elsewhere, worked mostly elsewhere, but spent some time in southern Missouri," Clohessy said. "They have been publicly named as accused child molesters, either through criminal action or lawsuits or by church officials themselves who have deemed them credibly accused."

The seven identified include priests John Edward Ruhl, John "Jack" Farris, Thomas Gregory Meyer, James Vincent Fitzgerald, Michael Charland, John O'Flaherty and Monsignor Thomas J. O'Brien.

Only two of the seven -- Ruhl and Charland -- are still living, Clohessy said.

Two of the seven priests -- Ruhl and Farris -- served the Catholic Church in Cape Girardeau and Perryville, Missouri.