KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
May. 08, 2012
By Joshua J. McElwee
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Missouri judge’s decision to go forward in seeking a wide range of documents from the leading advocacy group for clergy sex abuse victims could have far-reaching consequences for survivors’ support organizations, say victims’ advocates and lawyers.
Among those consequences, the experts tell NCR, could be a “chilling effect” on victims willing to come forward to report abuse and a bogging down of criminal and civil cases across the country trying to bring abusers from both the church and wider society to account.
Experts’ worries stem from Jackson County, Mo., Circuit Court Judge Ann Mesle’s most recent order to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests in a case concerning a Kansas City priest accused of abuse. The case, in which SNAP is not a party, made headlines in January when it became the first in which one of the group’s leaders was ordered to provide testimony.
Following back-and-forth filings from SNAP lawyers and those defending Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocesan priest Fr. Michael Tierney, Mesle ordered the group in late April to make available 23 years of internal files and correspondence to the priest’s lawyers.
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