UNITED STATES
NJ.com
By Mark Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
A lawsuit filed in Illinois claims the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a group instrumental in exposing the clergy sexual abuse crises in the early 2000s, regularly accepts “kickbacks” from lawyers who sue the Catholic Church and puts its own financial interests above the emotional interests of victims.
The suit — filed last week in Cook County, where the national headquarters is based — contends a former employee, Gretchen Hammond, was harassed and ultimately fired after confronting the nonprofit group’s founder and president, Barbara Blaine, its then-executive director, David Clohessy, and its outreach director, Barbara Dorris.
The group, known by the acronym SNAP, “does not focus on protecting or helping survivors — it exploits them,” Hammond contends in the suit. Hammond worked as a fundraiser for SNAP in its Chicago office from 2011 to 2013.
The suit does not allege wrongdoing in local chapters. SNAP, founded in 1988, has chapters in every state, in Canada and in Mexico.
In a statement and in telephone interviews, SNAP officials denied any impropriety, saying Hammond’s claims are false.
“The allegations are not true,” Blaine, the founder, said in a statement. “This will be proven in court. SNAP leaders are now, and always have been, devoted to following the SNAP mission: to help victims heal and to prevent further sexual abuse.”
Clohessy, the longtime public face of the national organization, issuing statements and conducting interviews, called the allegations “preposterous and confusing.”
“As best I can tell, this is the first we’ve heard …
In his telephone interview with NJ Advance Media, Clohessy responded: “I’ve written hundreds of thousands of emails, and I can’t imagine I would say that, That’s just not how we operate. Period.”
He also said he never gave Hammond permission to access his email and that he never gave her his password.
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