UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014
Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )
Inadvertently, by their comments over the past few hours, Vatican officials are essentially proving what a UN panel has concluded: that the Catholic hierarchy is not reforming its handling of clergy sex crimes and cover ups.
For decades, when abuse and cover up reports surface, many church officials “shoot the messenger” and divert attention. Vatican staffers are doing that now.
One of them, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, attacks the motives of 21 independent children’s experts who volunteer to serve on a respected United Nations panel, calling them “ideological” and implying they are deceitful (The report, he claims, “appears to have been written before (Vatican) representatives even had a chance to tell their side of the story. . . ”
He also says that “the report in some ways is not up to date” even though the panel met with Vatican officials just last month (and spent hours quizzing both abuse victims and Vatican staffers).
(If an archbishop blasts an objective panel of volunteers who work for children in public like this, imagine how bishops treat victims in private.)
Another “Vatican insider,” who is nameless, tells an Irish journalist that the UN report was full of “spite” and attempt to “bash the Church,” while of course providing not a scintilla of evidence to support such a claim.
This kind of attack is part and parcel of the long-standing, deeply-rooted Catholic clerical culture and practice of assaulting those who report abuse and cover up or question the hierarchy’s handling of abuse and cover up.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.