CT- Archbishop wants good child safety law thrown out

For immediate release: Friday, September 12, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, [email protected]om)

It's bad enough that Hartford's Catholic archbishop wants to overturn a jury verdict in a clergy sex abuse and cover up case. What's dramatically worse, however, is that he wants to deny hundreds of child sex abuse victims in Connecticut.

Connecticut has one of the nation's best statutes of limitations in the nation. The archbishop is trying to get it nullified. He's protecting predators and hurting children.

This is a stunningly selfish move. To protect Hartford priests who committed and concealed heinous crimes against children, Archbishop Leonard Blair is willing to endanger kids and hurt kids across the state, whether they are being or may be assaulted by parents, teachers, coaches or anyone.

He's not only putting Catholic kids at risk. He's putting all Connecticut kids at risk by trying to make it much, much tougher to expose child molesters in court.

Kids are safest when predators are jailed. But most child molesters are never prosecuted. The next best approach is to use the courts to warn parents and the public about them, and get them exposed, suspended, or fired so they will have less access to kids. That's what civil litigation does. That's what Archbishop Blair wants to prevent, by restoring an archaic, rigid, predator-friendly statute of limitations.

Shame on him and on every Connecticut Catholic official who is silent in this attack on Connecticut’s children.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 25 years and have more than 20,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Contact - David Clohessy (314-566-9790 cell, [email protected]), Barbara Dorris (314-503-0003 cell, [email protected])