FRESNO (CA)
Visalia Times-Delta [Visalia CA]
July 7, 2025
By Steve Pastis
On July 1, the same day that Bishop Joseph Brennan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno announced it filed a voluntary petition for chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, responded with its own statement.
The diocese currently faces 153 claims of abuse by its clergy.
SNAP’s press release stated that the organization “wonders at the timing,” noting that the diocese’s filing was the day after attorneys for the plaintiffs in the coordinated Northern California clergy cases made a motion asking the court to sanction the diocesan attorney “for the unacceptable delay in starting the bankruptcy process.”
As liaison counsel for the plaintiffs, Richard Simons of Furtado, Jaspovice & Simons issued the 83-page motion for sanctions on June 30. The motion was critical of the “delays of over a year in the ‘imminent filing’ of bankruptcy.”
“Delay is always a tactic for the defense in lawsuits, and the Catholic Church has been using it quite well all these years,” said Melanie Sakoda, SNAP’s survivor support director.
In its July 1 press release, the diocese carefully acknowledged that there have been victims of sexual abuse by clergy.
“Our church must address the suffering that victims of clergy sexual abuse endure,” Brennan said in the release. “We know the sin; it will always be before us. As your bishop, I commit to maintain the highest standards for the protection of the vulnerable and our youth, and I will continue to confront allegations of abuse or any wrongdoing with diligence and care.”
“He says he wants to make things right, but it’s always, ‘We’re sorry for what these priests did,” Sakoda said. “They don’t really apologize for their decisions that would have impacted how this happened.
“There is, if you will, a pattern in the Catholic Church of moving a priest who’s accused of abuse in a particular parish,” she said. “They either move him to another parish within the diocese, sometimes they transfer them between dioceses, and sometimes they even transfer priests to another country.
[Diocese of Fresno: List of credibly accused]
“That’s what they really need to address,” she continued. “Why does it take so much for them to remove a potentially dangerous priest from ministry? They need to acknowledge that probably if a clergyman abuses one child, it’s not going to be just one. He’s going to have other victims. And every place that he works needs to be open to the idea that there were children that were hurt in that particular parish or school or camp.”
‘A much higher risk’
“Survivors of childhood sexual abuse are at a much higher risk of suicide than the general population,” Sakoda said. “They are a much higher risk of substance abuse, and that can sometimes lead to an early death, whether it’s an overdose or just risky behavior, maybe drunk driving.”
She added that there are also health problems resulting from the stress caused by sexual abuse.
“There are a lot more diseases that are associated with stress – high blood pressure, heart problems, cancers,” she said.
Even so, it often takes decades for childhood sexual abuse victims to report their abuse.
“One of the other things that factors into this kind of case is that most of the survivors who filed lawsuits are going to be older,” Sakoda said. “They’re going to be because it usually takes victims maybe 40 years to come to terms with the fact that they were abused, sometimes even to remember it. Or perhaps they’re they don’t want to upset parents who may be faithful Catholics, so they don’t want to say anything.”
As a result, the average age when people start coming forward is 50 to 70, according to Sakoda, who said that the Catholic Church can be dismissive because “most of these cases are older.”
“Well, of course they are, because it takes survivors a long time to come to terms with what happened to them, whether they have repressed memories or they just put it into a little thing at the back of their mind so they could move on,” she said.
More: Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno ‘credible’ list of abusers includes late Visalia priest
From claimants to creditors
When a diocese files a bankruptcy, claimants become creditors, meaning they can be paid as a group, and the harm they endured is no longer considered.
“That’s not the bankruptcy court’s job,” Sakoda said. “Their job is to assess how much money is available to distribute to the creditors and how they’re going to divide the pie. They don’t care what the church’s decisions were that led to all these people having claims against the diocese.
“The other thing that happens in a bankruptcy, which actually disturbs me even more, is once they file for bankruptcy, Fresno will release a date to offer other people time to come forward, but once that date passes, if you were sexually abused before that closing date and you didn’t come forward, you’re out of luck,” she said.
Victims’ advocates are also concerned that a diocese may transfer funds into different accounts to keep them safe from lawsuits.
“In preparation for the bankruptcy, they will have begun to transfer assets, perhaps to parishes or other institutions under their control,” Sakoda said. “What has happened in the past is once the bankruptcy is completed, they include all those parishes and institutions under the umbrella of the bankruptcy.
“So if you were abused by a priest in a Bakersfield parish, once the diocese declares bankruptcy, you can’t go after the Bakersfield parish either, even though the diocese may have transferred the ownership of the church property to the parish,” she said. “The church has the money to hire high priced attorneys who, frankly, know what they’re doing. They know how to manipulate the bankruptcy situation.”
The Diocese of Fresno was offered an opportunity to respond to the accusations and other statements in this article.
“In regard to our bankruptcy filing, the diocese is not providing further comment at this time,” replied Chandler Marquez, director of communications for the diocese, in an email.
If that decision changes, comments from the diocese will be included in an updated version of this article.
Read the full motion for sanctions. [Click here.]
By Steve Pastis