WASHINGTON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
Admitted serial predator priest gets “full honors”
SNAP: “Move re-victimizes the wounded & deters other victims”
Group also discloses names of 18 predator priests in archdiocese
WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will:
–blast Seattle Catholic officials for burying an admitted serial predator priest with full honors,
–urge each of the 20 clerics involved to publicly apologize,
–prod Seattle’s archbishop to work to reform the church’s national abuse policy to prevent such “callous and hurtful” funerals in the future with other child molesting clerics.
The group will also disclose the names of 18 predator priests who have received little or no public attention in the Seattle area and urge church staff to “aggressively reach out to anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered their crimes.”
WHEN
Tuesday, Sept. 2 at 2:00 p.m.
WHERE
Outside St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, 732 18th Ave. East in the Capitol Hill section of Seattle
WHO
Three or four adults who were abused as kids by clergy and belong to a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (including a Seattle woman who once supervised the admitted predator and a Missouri man who is SNAP’s long time executive director)
WHY
1) An ex-Seattle archdiocesan priest who admitted molesting youngsters was buried last month with full priestly honors in a highly visible funeral led by 30 local clerics. He is David Peter Jaeger, who was defrocked because of allegations that he molested 8-10 children in the 1970s.
SNAP does not oppose church funerals for predator priests. But the group feels these should be low-key events; otherwise, they “rub salt into the already deep and still fresh wounds of thousands who have been raped and sodomized by Catholic priests and re-victimized by callous and deceitful Catholic officials.” Such ceremonies also discourage and deter other victims from “speaking up, exposing predators and protecting kids,” SNAP says.
According to Jaegar’s website (www.davidpjaeger.com), Fr. John McGrann performed the funeral mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Capitol Hill. About 20 priests concelebrated, eight nuns were Eucharistic ministers and hundreds of mourners attended.
One priest has already apologized for the ceremony. On Aug. 2, in a two page, single-spaced letter to his flock at St. Joseph’s, pastor Fr. John D. Whitney said “I apologize for the confusion and hurt” caused by letting the funeral take place at his church in the way that it did.
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