BishopAccountability.org

SNAP calls Catholic Diocese of Memphis 'credibly accused' list incomplete, "insult to victims"

By Rebecca Butcher
LocalMemphis.com
February 28, 2020

https://bit.ly/32QxOG5

[with video]

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests claim many more names are missing.

There are twenty Mid-South priests, most of them no longer alive, that the church now admits had credible claims against them of sexually abusing children.

Although the list is out, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests claim many more names are missing. One victim called a director in tears because their abuser wasn't named.

David Brown with SNAP claims most of the names were already known, and the list is missing many others.

"To me it was woefully shameful," said Brown, a SNAP. "It's lacking names that it should be naming, it's many, many more."

According to the Memphis Diocese, a review board went through 442 personnel files to investigate claims of sex abuse involving children. Then a professional investigator was employed to attempt to find victims.

Father Juan Duran is one of the listed and was dismissed in 2017 eight years after the diocese settled a lawsuit with a former St. Jude patient. The victim claims Duran sexually molested him at the Church of the Ascension in Raleigh when he was 14. The victim said Duran often took him out at night and offered to hire a prostitute and sexually abused him in Sunday school classrooms.

It's a story Brown says he can relate to being abused himself by a different priest as a teen.

"That 15-year-old boy died the time that that priest abused me, raped me. The dreams, aspirations. That he wanted to be a priest."

The diocese canceled an interview Local 24 News set up, but told us over the phone victims have come forward over years about abuse involving priests but some of those priests have died. On the list of credibly accused priests, all but 5 are dead.

"Somewhere along the line the Catholic Church decided we're damaged goods," said David Brown, SNAP Outreach Director. "They want nothing to do with us."

In a letter to parishioners, Bishop David Talley wrote he is "horrified by the extent of damage caused by the sexual abuse of minors perpetrated by Catholic clergy and is asking anyone who may have been abuse to contact the diocese."

 




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