UNITED STATES
The Morning Call

Bill White

David Clohessy, national director for the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, likes to tell the story of the struggling early days of his organization — and when that changed, dramatically.

Clohessy, a victim of sexual abuse by a priest for about four years starting when he was 11 or 12, began volunteering for the support, information and advocacy group SNAP in the early ’90s. But as you saw if you’ve watched the Oscar-contending movie “Spotlight,” SNAP had a terrible time generating interest in the things it knew about child sexual abuse by priests and the way cases were covered up, in Boston and all over the country.

The movie dramatizes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that exposed widespread child sexual abuse by Boston area priests and the massive coverup that allowed it to continue. It also depicted the…