WASHINGTON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Friday, May 9, 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 )
Child sex cases against a Catholic cleric who molested more than 50 kids – and who worked at several Seattle area schools – are expected to settle soon.
We urge Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to aggressively spread the word about his crimes and beg anyone who saw, suspected or suffered them to call police. Specifically, we beg Sartain to put notices in parish bulletins and on church websites prodding victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to call police so that the cleric might be charged, convicted and kept away from kids.
The cleric, Brother Edward Courtney, belongs to a Catholic religious order, the New Rochelle, New York based Christian Brothers.
We urge Christian Brothers officials to explain and apologize for “paying Courtney’s way at (a university” to earn accreditation as a school principal” and writing “letters of recommendation on his behalf” even after they’d received multiple credible abuse reports against him (according to Seattle Weekly).
Over two decades from coast to coast, Br. Courtney was a principal, teacher and coach in ten schools (in New York, Nevada and Washington state) and is believed to be living now in Honolulu. We strongly suspect that neither Br. Courtney’s neighbors nor his family really know the truth about him, so he could well be molesting kids even now.
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