ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014
Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314-862-7688 home, 314-503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )
We’re disappointed that a Springfield Catholic priest has been promoted to head the Wichita diocese.
Bishop Carl Kemme has been basically the second-in-command and actually ran the diocese for months in between bishop appointments. During those years, diocesan staff made a number of worrisome decisions. Here are two from just the past year.
– They temporarily let an accused child molesting cleric, Fr. Robert “Bud” DeGrand, resign from his posts, instead of suspending him, after delaying for a week after the diocesan abuse panel quietly urged them to oust Fr. DeGrand. They used vague, misleading language – like “misconduct” – to describe alleged child sex crimes, hoping to soften the horror of sexual assaults on children by clergy.
– They put Fr. Thomas Donovan back on the job after he’d been found by police to be wearing an orange jumpsuit and “a leather bondage-type mask with a bar in his mouth” (A church therapist allegedly diagnosed him as having engaged in “non-sexual self-bondage.”)
Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. So we are not optimistic that he will take real steps to reform long-standing, deeply rooted patterns of irresponsible, self-serving behavior by bishops in this on-going crisis.
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