UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016
Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)
A priest faces charges of strangling a four month old in a Kansas City suburb. His church supervisors and colleagues must aggressively reach out to others in KS, MO and NJ who may have seen, suspected or suffered other crimes by the cleric.
The accused is Fr. Oleh Zhownirovych, of Clifton, NJ is or was a priest affiliated with the Ukrainian Orthodox Holy Ascension Church in Passaic County.
All too often, when church staff and volunteers are arrested on criminal charges, their current and former church colleagues do nothing. All too often, corrupt church officials refuse to act and thus essentially protect criminals and endanger children. And all too often, secular officials with the power and duty to safeguard society’s most vulnerable pursue ONLY church staff who COMMIT abuse and ignore church staff who CONCEAL abuse.
Church members and employees in any place this priest has been have a moral and civic duty to help law enforcement investigate and prosecute him. They’ll be tempted, of course, to do nothing. But that’s wrong. And their inaction might help enable the priest to exploit legal technicalities and escape punishment and hurt more kids.
Church officials will no doubt be tempted to do nothing about him. That too is wrong. Their inaction might well encourage other clerics to ignore or conceal known or suspected crimes against children by their colleagues.
So we hope that anyone who saw, suspected or suffered this priest’s crimes will speak up, call police, protect kids, expose wrongdoers, deter cover ups and start healing. We hope church officials will take aggressive steps to help police and prosecutors.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.