WASHINGTON
National Catholic Reporter
Dan Morris-Young | Nov. 11, 2016
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests have asked Yakima Bishop Joseph Tyson in a Nov. 10 letter to remove himself from “his race for chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People.”
SNAP charged that Tyson had “done virtually nothing to undo the damage” done by past clerical sex abusers in the Yakima diocese and those who shielded them. A diocesan official on Nov. 11 responded that “almost without exception, our people express gratitude for the increased awareness they have gained, information that most are not receiving anywhere else” on sex abuse.
In an email to NCR, Msgr. Robert Siler, Yakima chancellor and moderator of the curia, wrote: “We have beefed up our training program this past year, introducing live Virtus abuse prevention trainings in English and Spanish that take 2-1/2 to 3 hours. We have trained more than 1,000 employees and volunteers. I have personally conducted 80 percent of those trainings.”
In a news release, SNAP says that when Tyson was installed in 2011 it “publicly expressed hopes that he would ‘take immediate steps to warn Mexican families and officials about [Deacon] Aaron Ramirez and tell the full truth about allegations against Fr. [Darell] Mitchell.'”
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