SPRINGFIELD (IL)
State Journal-Register [Springfield IL]
May 25, 2023
By Steven Spearie
A member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) urged Springfield Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki to provide full assignment records for credibly accused priests living in or who previously served in the diocese that covers central Illinois.
David Clohessy, the former national director of SNAP from St. Louis and a clerical abuse survivor, also urged Paprocki to post the names of at least nine alleged child-molesting clerics who are missing from the Springfield diocese’s predator list.
The nine were mentioned by name in an exhaustive report released by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul Tuesday.
Between them, they are on at least 25 church-sponsored credibly accused lists all over the country and some are on multiple lists, Clohessy claimed.
Members and supporters of SNAP gathered outside of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Wednesday afternoon.
Clohessy, who now directs SNAP volunteers in Missouri, also made his case in a letter to Paprocki Wednesday.
Clohessy said Paprocki is the only one of the Illinois bishops who refuses to reveal the parishes and other sites where child molesting clerics have served.
The AG investigation, started in 2018, found 451 Catholic priests and religious brothers abused nearly 2,000 children in the state’s six diocese over seven decades. Before the investigation, dioceses publicly listed only 103 substantiated child sex abusers, Raoul said.
Raoul criticized church leaders for allowing those abusers to hide “in plain sight.”
Listing parishes where abusers have served, Clohessy rationalized, is “information that law enforcement should have, parents should have, parishioners should have. Why split hairs? Why conceal the information? Why not just come clean for the sake of wounded victims, for the sake of vulnerable kids, for the sake of law enforcement?”
Clohessy further called on Springfield Catholic officials to disclose the names of every single child-molesting cleric who was or is in the diocese, “whether they were here for 20 years or 20 days, whether they were ordained here or somewhere else, whether Bishop Paprocki signs their paycheck or another church official signs their paycheck, whether they’re alive or dead.”
Illinois lawmakers should “show some spine” and come up with measures that will make it easier in the future to prevent abuse by prosecuting and suing child abuse perpetrators, Clohessy said.
No bishop in Illinois was “more severely criticized than Paprocki (in the report) and I think the attorney general is absolutely on target when calls out this particularly callous and insensitive man,” Clohessy said, standing at the corner of Sixth Street and Lawrence Avenue. “It’s crystal clear, I think, and even more clear now in the wake of the AG’s report, that Paprocki puts his reputation, his career and his comfort ahead of the safety of kids and the well-being of victims.”
Andrew Hansen, a spokesman for the Springfield diocese, said “countless hours were spent by our team working with the attorney general’s team to go through all the historical files to address any and all questions. All the pertinent details are now summarized in the report.”
Hansen did not directly answer questions about why the diocese doesn’t provide full assignment records for all predator priests or why it wouldn’t post the names of nine clerics who have been deemed “credibly accused” of abuse by other church officials.
Paprocki has owned up to the fact, Hansen added, that some priests and leaders of the Catholic Church in the past failed.
“The Attorney General’s inquiry into the history of clergy sexual abuse of minors in this diocese has served as a reminder that some clergy in the church committed shameful and disgraceful sins against innocent victim survivors and did damage that simply cannot be undone,” Paprocki said in a statement Tuesday. “As bishop of this diocese, I cannot undo the damages of the past, but I have been and continue to be fully committed to ensuring we do all we can to prevent abuse from happening again. The changes our diocese enacted have proven to be effective as we are not aware of a single incident of sexual abuse of a minor by clergy alleged to have occurred in this diocese in nearly 20 years.”
Clohessy countered that it was “disingenuous and frankly dangerous for Paprocki to claim, ‘Oh, gee, none of this has happened recently.’ He doesn’t know. He can’t know and the only responsible thing to do, is to assume what logic and history and psychology tell us which is that there are still more predator priests out. They are still dangerous. Some are molesting today, and we will not know for years and decades who they are. This is a time for vigilance, not complacency, not deception.”
The “sad, simple truth,” Clohessy said, is that victims “always have and always will” report abuse decades down the road.
“If you go to Arizona today and you ask every single person who got their roof repaired, ‘Did the contractor do a good job,’ they’re not going to know,” he said. “Six months from now, it will rain, and the roof will leak and that’s when they’ll call the AG. Men like Paprocki, who are fond of splitting hairs and dodging blame, they will say, ‘The roof was fixed six months ago. Why didn’t you call the AG then?’
“The crimes (committed) may be old. The cover-up continues, the risk to kids today around these undisclosed predators continues and the devastating harm continues, day-in and day-out.”
Also in Springfield for an extended spring session, state lawmakers addressed the AG report Wednesday morning. Rep. Ann Williams, D-Chicago, thanked the survivors for their testimony provided to investigators and recognized SNAP’s late founder, Barbara Ann Blaine.
“We are grateful for your efforts to release the shame and secrecy that have plagued the church for decades on the issue,” she said on the House floor.
Blaine founded SNAP in 1988 and served as its president until February 2017, just months before she passed away.
Reporter Patrick Keck of The State Journal-Register contributed to this report. Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, sspearie@sj-r.com, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.