Media Statements

The Catholic Church in Portugal is setting up a national committee to coordinate the work of local church groups looking into possible cases of child sex abuse by members of the clergy. This action comes after a devasting report revealed the depth of child sex abuse within the French Catholic Church. That study, released by an independent commission, estimated that some 330,000 children and adults were sexually abused over 70 years by priests or other Church-related figures.

We applaud this development, although a truly independent investigation by secular officials would be ideal. Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland all launched their own nationwide probes into crimes committed against their children and the vulnerable by Catholic clergy. It is long past time for other countries around the world to do the same, including the United States.

Just two years ago, Portuguese Church officials said authorities had investigated only about a dozen allegations of sexual abuse involving Portuguese priests since 2001. More than half of those cases were dropped because Church investigators decided there was not enough evidence to pursue them.

While we hope that this new development will shine a light through the dark clouds of sexual abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church, we cannot forget the far-reaching efforts Church officials have taken to minimize this ongoing problem. 

CONTACT: Michael McDonnell, Communication Manager (267-261-0578, [email protected]  Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director (517-974-9009, [email protected]), Shaun Dougherty, SNAP Board President (814-341-8386, [email protected])

(SNAP, the Survivors Network, has been providing support for victims of sexual abuse in institutional settings for 30 years. We have more than 25,000 survivors and supporters in our network. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Fr. Marian Babjak was placed on administrative leave last week by the Diocese of Youngstown. The priest is accused of having "inappropriate physical contact" with a child. Fr. Babjak worked at Christ Our Savior Parish in Struthers, Ohio. According to the Mahoning Matters news outlet, the clergyman has been at the parish since at least August 2020.

While the Diocese encourages anyone who has been a victim of misconduct by a clergy member or church employee to contact its Victims Assistance Coordinator, we believe the best method of reporting such incidents is to contact law enforcement directly. Secular investigations are the way to deal with clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, which has been going on unabated for decades. More importantly, such reports are more likely to reach the public, which helps survivors heal and empowers victims, many of who are still sitting in silence, to come forward.

Gary Berthiaume, 79, who was accused of sexually assaulting three teenage boys in the 1970s, took pleas on Monday to a trio of charges and now likely faces as long as 15 years in prison. The Michigan Attorney General’s office said the former Catholic priest agreed to plead guilty to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and also pleaded no contest to one count of gross indecency.

Berthiaume was originally charged last year with assaulting a 14-year-old boy in 1977. In June, AG Dana Nessel’s office added two more charges after more victims came forward with accusations against the former priest. At the time of the assaults, Berthiaume worked as a priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Wyandotte and then later at Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington.

A defrocked Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Robert Brennan, pleaded guilty today in federal court to four counts of making false statements to the FBI. The 84 year old former cleric now lives in Maryland. Brennan was arrested on these charges in September 2019.

SNAP’s Board President Shaun Dougherty and SNAP's Communications Manager Mike McDonnell were present in the courtroom in support of the McIlmail family. The McIlmails lost their son Sean just days before Brennan's preliminary hearing on charges that he sexually abused Sean as a child.

Brennan’s guilty plea came with an agreement that the former priest serve five years’ probation, two of which will be on home monitoring by federal officers. Judge Anita B. Brody set the sentencing date for March 2022.

Fr. Robert McWilliams was sentenced to life in prison on November 9, 2021, after being convicted of multiple sex crimes that involve children. The clergyman was arrested on Dec. 5, 2019, at St. Joseph in Strongsville, Ohio, where he was working at the time. Fr. McWilliam was also affiliated with St. Helen’s in Geauga County. The priest pleaded guilty in July to juvenile sex trafficking, as well as the production and distribution of sexually explicit images of minors. Fr. McWilliams was labeled by prosecutors as a "triple threat" and "sociopath." 

In their sentencing memorandum, federal officials noted that the cleric was "a consumer of child pornography and an extortionist who violated the sacrament of confession to obtain the information he later used, under aliases, to seek the production of sexually explicit material from boys he was 'counseling.'” Additionally, prosecutors said Fr. McWilliams pretended to be a female on social media sites to contact underage male victims he knew from his parishes in Strongsville and Newbury Township.

In August 2018, on the heels of the scathing grand jury report on six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses, Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson took steps toward getting to the bottom of clergy abuse in his own state. We are grateful that the AG initiated this investigation and, more importantly, opened up a hotline so that survivors' voices could be heard. We hope that this example is followed by the attorneys general in the remaining states that have yet to open an investigation.

In the report issued today, AG Peterson reported that his office received 258 complaints of sexual abuse by clergy. However, in a sobering and disappointing fashion, it turned out that only one of those cases could be prosecuted, although the victim, in that case, decided to not move forward with charges. 

Jacci van Alder, 60, now of Vermont, has made several attempts in the last two years to gain recognition and justice. In our view, each and every survivor who gives of their voice will help another survivor who is sitting in deafening silence. We are happy to share Jacci’s story with her consent to do so.  

Like too many others, Alder alleges that she was groomed, gaslighted, beaten, psychologically tortured and sexually molested by the head of her church for more than 10 years. Unlike so many others, it also happened to be her own father. He allowed a teenage boy from the church to begin molesting her at age 4 when he babysat. She endured her father’s misogynistic and narcissistic control, alcoholism, womanizing, encounters with school-age girls, his addiction to porn, his open 10-year affair with his church secretary and the beatings. She got hit with belts, 2 x 4's, hands, fists, and finally attempted strangulation. “It all has to be told," says Alder.

A man who had been running a “religious mentorship institute” out of his home in McLean, Virginia, was arrested this week for sexually assaulting two children who took part in the program. This is a disturbing case that we hope will bring increased scrutiny from the government as to how such programs are licensed and monitored, and will make parents think carefully about the people with whom they trust their children.

Fr. Jean Claude Philippe was convicted last week of the sexual battery of a parishioner and faces up to 15 years in prison. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Carmen Cabarga will sentence the priest in the coming weeks. The jury verdict capped a week-long trial for Fr. Philippe, whose arrest was an embarrassing scandal for the Archdiocese of Miami, particularly after the victim testified that she initially told another priest, Fr. Silverio Rueda, about the attack and was told to keep quiet. 

We are amazed by the survivor in this case not only for her resilience in the face of this vicious assault but also for her persistence in bringing the attack both to the attention of Catholic officials and then to the police. Her efforts have culminated in Fr. Philippe's conviction. We hope that Judge Cabarga, for the safety of the community, will impose the maximum sentence allowed under the Florida sentencing guidelines and get this dangerous man off of the streets.

Fr. Michel Schemm, ordained in 1993, has been placed on administrative leave and restricted from ministerial duties. The Wichita Diocesan Review Board made these recommendations after an initial review of a child sex abuse report. Fr. Shemm had been working as a pastor at the Church of the Resurrection in Bel Aire. In a statement, the Diocese said that the allegations against the cleric were reported to law enforcement.