MISSOURI
Riverfront Times
Posted By Danny Wicentowski on Wed, Aug 24, 2016
A messy lawsuit that accuses a victim advocacy group of defaming Fr. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang reached a turning point this week — and it could spell defeat for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, better known as SNAP, and executive director David Clohessy, who maintains that Jiang is a sexual predator.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Carol E. Jackson sanctioned SNAP for failing to turn over records that Jiang’s lawyers say would reveal a conspiracy to destroy the life of a promising young priest, who came to St. Louis after fleeing religious persecution in China. Jiang has twice been accused in court of sexual abuse, in Lincoln County and St. Louis City, but prosecutors in both cases ultimately dropped those charges.
“Do we think Jiang is dangerous? Absolutely,” says Clohessy. “We’re trying to take the long view. For almost 30 years we’ve helped victims and helped expose those who commit sex crimes. We’ve been sued for slander maybe five times and never lost.”
This time could be different. Jiang was charged with sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy in a Catholic school bathroom in 2011 and 2012. The charges were dropped in June 2015 — one week later, Jiang filed a defamation lawsuit against the boy’s parents, as well as SNAP, the city of St. Louis and two metro police officers who investigated the case.
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