Paedophile Remains a Priest
Chris Morris, August 11, 2017, Otago Daily News
The Catholic Church is defending its decision not to defrock a paedophile priest who abused boys in Dunedin.
It was confirmed this week Magnus (Max) Murray, now aged 90, is in the care of a Catholic-owned rest-home in Auckland. Despite admitting 10 charges of sexual offending against boys in Dunedin, dating back to the 1950s, Fr Murray has retained his status as a priest following his conviction in 2003, the church has confirmed
of a group of former pupils campaigning for Kavanagh College to adequately acknowledge its links to Fr Murray’s dark past.
He was a teacher at St Paul’s High School, which later became Kavanagh College, at the time . . .
Winter Appeal 2023
To our friends,
2023 has been a long year with many ups and downs for us all. As we close out the year, we at SNAP hope that you are feeling like you are on your way to being healthy, fulfilled, and happy. This past year has brought both successes and challenges. Thanks to the support you have shown in the past, we’ve been able to celebrate the good days and weather the stormy ones. Now, we are once again asking for your support as we work to support survivors new and old as we ‘Move SNAP Forward.’
At SNAP we are proud to have hosted a very well-attended conference in August 2023. This event allowed us to gather friends, survivors, advocates, and allies for a weekend of camaraderie and connection. We were so happy to be able to welcome many first-time attendees to gather in person and are already looking forward to the next conference.
To strengthen our movement for justice, healing, and prevention, SNAP will be expanding our peer support and providing more volunteer opportunities in the coming year. Through this great work, we are ensuring survivor voices are represented as we work for significant change that will benefit children and survivors.
Right now, survivors worldwide are getting the help they need from SNAP, and more and more reach out to us daily, but we need your help to keep those programs going and get our volunteers the training they need to thrive.
Your tax-deductible gift to SNAP can help offset the cost of our important mission. If you are not in a position to contribute, you can still support us by sharing this letter with those who can. As we continue to fight for survivors across the globe, your donation or sharing the great work SNAP does will help us continue our work to protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded, and prevent abuse.
Your donation ensures SNAP will be there for those who need us more than ever!
Warmly,
Michael W. McDonnell, C.P.S.
Interim Executive Director
Showing 3 comments
My physical brain was developemently altered by the molestation which occurred in Jackson,MS at St. PETERS Cathedral , weekly , over a period of 3 years.
It’s the blatant disregard for and total rejection of victims that really gets to me. The only way I have found to deal with it, is certainly not forgiveness (as the church teaches to vast numbers of our youth now as always as it has systematically indoctrinated them with lies)…
I have since come to understand forgiveness to be just another word some folks invented long ago. The word has no place in a truly compationate and educated mind.
The truth is that The Whole of the catholic church is a diseased society which,since it’s inception, has sought to extort the most dejected and mentally traumatized in our world. As such, you must understand how truly mentally ill these molesters are.
One day in 1996 I made my way to Houma, LA. I paid Broussard a surprise visit at the business he owned, told him I wanted to talk. I’m also a disabled Veteran. My intention for driving was simply to take his life. Like he has taken mine. All I saw was an old and pitiful sniveling mental patient. A truly sick mental patient that should have been institutionalized for life after he molested my childhood friends, 3 brothers. My father as well as theirs was a Doctor.
I couldn’t bring myself to do what I had intended to do. He died 3 years later of natural causes. A few years ago I resigned myself to the fact that my own mother (who refused to participate in the lawsuit against the church) is totally brainwashed by these monsters and so totally trumatized that she feels damned by either side she would have chosen. ….. I lost my mother as a result of this, oh she’s still very much alive … we just have no relationship. My choice. See, I found real ongoing daily compassion for that boy who was hurt, is hurt, so horribly….. I love and refuse to ever allow anyone, including myself, to ever do ANYTHING to hurt him any more. I’m an adult and have 4 grandkids. I recently learned to love the injured child I was… am. I mean I really love that kid. I will not hurt him again. And treating another living thing with anything other than true compassion. ….. will hurt me.
And that’s what’s so exciting, might not happen in my lifetime, but the catholic church is doomed. Destroyed daily with the mindless disregard for compassion.
In my diocese of Altoona-Johnstown we have a number of these retired ‘pedophile priests’. A group of them, along with their enabler-bishop Joseph Adamec are ‘retired’ in Flordia. They were identified in a 2016 PA Grand Jury report as repeat sexual offenders. The statute of limitation was expired so the secular legal system let them go free. In spite of being identified as repeat child sex offenders, basically nothing was done to them by the Roman Catholic Church. They are retired or have been removed from active ministry yet they receive pay and benefits from the church and are still priests. If the church was the least bit serious about putting an end to the sexual abuse of children-these guilty priests would be publicly defrocked-removed from the priesthood and stripped of pay and benefits. Allowing these hideous men to remain as priests adds insult to injury to the many survivors. It tells me that regardless of the rhetoric by church officials, the Roman Catholic church will always side with the priests and bishops and throw the survivors under the bus.