MISSOURI
Bilgrimage
[SNAP court documents]
William D. Lindsey
At the end of a posting last Thursday, I noted the situation now facing the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in Missouri, where subpoenas have been issued in both Kansas City and St. Louis, demanding that the group’s leaders turn over private communications between themselves and survivors of childhood sexual abuse. This weekend, the Kansas City Star published a strong editorial about the situation, which characterizes a recent ruling of Jackson Co. judge Ann Mesle demanding that SNAP turn over to the court private communications with abuse survivors as “harmful and wrong.” The Star editorial notes that the Missouri Press Association has filed an amicus brief regarding Mesle’s court order, which maintains that “[i]t would chill future news gathering. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that news gathering is protected under the First Amendment.”
Here’s a rough chronology of this developing situation, with links to valuable commentary:
At National Catholic Reporter, Joshua McElwee has reported on the situation in Kansas City from the end of December, when Judge Mesle ordered SNAP to be deposed on 2 January, and to disclose communications sought by the defendant’s attorneys as he did so. As McElwee noted following the 2 January deposition, David Clohessy of SNAP refused to hand over some of the requested communications as he deposed, and SNAP now faces penalties for resisting the court order.
The Kansas City developments were followed immediately by a similar court order in St. Louis, involving a now 19-year old abuse victim who has been assisted by SNAP official Barbara Dorris. McElwee reports on this situation several days ago, indicating that Dorris has now received a subpoena almost identical to the one issued to Clohessy in Kansas City and demanding the same unprecedented access to SNAP’s private communications going back almost 25 years.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.