UNITED STATES
Riverfront Times
By Chad Garrison
Mon., Dec. 10 2012
Ten year’s ago this month David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), was named one of the world’s “25 Most Intriguing” by People magazine.
Included in that 2002 class were actors and performers such as George Clooney and Britney Spears, world leaders the likes of Saddam Hussein and Jimmy Carter, athletes Serena Williams and Pat Tillman (the football player who’d recently left the NFL to serve in the Army but had yet to die of friendly fire) and a few Regular Joes such as Clohessy.
Last week Daily RFT caught up with Clohessy, to discuss what the People magazine designation meant at the time, what SNAP has accomplished since then, and what challenges still lie ahead for the St. Louis-based organization that continues to garner international headlines for exposing child sex abuse.
Daily RFT: SNAP has been around since 1988. But what changed in 2002 that even a celebrity magazine such as People had to write about you?
David Clohessy: 2002 was a crazy, crazy year. The Boston Globe had done this huge investigative series — literally hundreds of stories — about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. And all of the sudden the topic became the burning, Page One story in newspaper after newspaper after newspaper all across the county. And that is only reason why someone from SNAP was in People magazine.
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