AUS - Victims challenge new BoysTown officials

• Victims challenge new BoysTown officials
• They urge "aggressive outreach" to "those still suffering"
• Group wants all predators listed on BoysTown website 
• And it pushes officials to send mailings to former students

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a footpath news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will
- Urge officials at BoysTown to use all the resources at their disposal to find former students who were abused at the charity’s Beaudesert school between the 1960s until 2001
- Disclose the names of all known predators who worked or lived at the school and post their names publicly, and
- Send mass mailings to the families of all who attended the school during that time period in order to find others who were abused

WHEN
Wednesday November 28 at 11:00 a.m.

WHERE
In front of BoysTown, Suite 5 Cordova St, Milton, QLD ( between Parkview and Mayneview)

WHO
One or two members of an international support group called SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) including an American woman who is the organisation’s president and founder.

WHY
A former residential school for boys near Brisbane has recently been rocked by an abuse scandal that spans four decades and involves a large Catholic order.

The BoysTown Beaudesert school, located southwest of Brisbane, was established in 1961 by the De La Salle Brothers, a large order of Catholic priests. The school recently came under fire following a 60 Minutes report in whichformer students of the school described physical and emotional abuse at the school that had gone on for decades. The new administration of the charity has publicly backed the victims, but an international support group for victims of clergy abuse is pushing for further action.

Leaders of SNAP are calling on officials at BoysTown to use all of their resources to reach out to past students and their families, to inform them of the wide ranging abuse allegations and to urge anyone who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes to come forward immediately. Specifically, they are asking BoysTown to send out mass mailings to every person who attended the Beaudesert school between 1961 and 2001.

Given how wide ranging the abuse was SNAP believes that there are others still suffering in silence and shame and wants BoysTown officials to find other victims and work to ease their suffering.

SNAP is also calling on BoysTown to post the names of the credibly accused abusers on its websites. This step, SNAP says, is the quickest, simplest, and cheapest way to spread information about abusers and to encourage others to come forward.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/new-boystown-regime-backs-alleged-victims-20120917-261b5.html