For immediate release: Monday, April 4, 2011

Victims blast newly-promoted SA Catholic official

Statement by Barbara Garcia Boehland of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests 210-621-2177; Cell: 210-725-8329

A year ago, when former San Antonio Archbishop Gomez was tapped to head the LA archdiocese, we said that a man “with a troubling record of recent secrecy and risk regarding child safety” was being promoted.

Now, the same thing is happening again. Another San Antonio Catholic official, Al Notzen, is being promoted.

We feel the same way we did a year ago – wrong doing is being rewarded. There are nearly 200 American Catholic dioceses. Each has a review board. So there are thousands of current and former local diocesan review board members who could have been elevated to be the head of the National Review Board. Notzen is a terrible choice.

Time and time again, we blast bishops for reckless, callous and deceitful actions in child sex abuse and cover up cases. But bishops don’t act alone. They have accomplices. One of them is Notzen. And those accomplices must be held responsible too. They provide corrupt bishops with “cover.” That’s what Notzen is doing.

He has been on the local San Antonio abuse review panel since 2003. In that role, he has kept quiet about thsese disturbing cases.

Just last year, Gomez kept silent about two clerics whose religious supervisors deemed ‘credibly accused’ of sexually abusing teenagers. One of those clerics now apparently works in Rome.
-- Brother Richard Suttle is now living and studying in San Antonio. Archdiocesan officials are permitting this, even though, according to the Express News, Suttle “sexually abused a teen in the early 1980s in Arizona, according to a public notice from the Phoenix diocese.” Notzen’s silence here is essentially endorsing this secrecy and recklessness.
-- Father Charles H. Miller “worked at St. Mary's University for more than two decades and was let go in 2007 after his religious order found a claim that he sexually abused a teen in 1980 to be credible. In 2008, Miller was moved to Rome,” the Express News wrote in 2009. Evidently Miller still works for the Marianists there. Notzen’s silence here is essentially endorsing this secrecy and recklessness.

(In both cases, then-Archbishop Gomez let Catholic religious orders quietly transfer these credibly accused clerics into the San Antonio diocese in recent years. Neither Gomez nor the religious orders apparently warned parishioners or the public. Notzen’s silence here is essentially endorsing this secrecy and recklessness.)
-- Fr. Larry Hernandez had his faculties (i.e., his ability to function as a priest) suspended in early 2008 because of credible child sex abuse allegations. Gomez kept it quiet until March 2009. Notzen’s silence here is essentially endorsing this secrecy and recklessness.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of US Catholic officials which have acted recklessly and secretively in clergy sex cases in recent year. Unfortunately, the Pope has promoted a number of them. And now US bishops are picking, for their abuse panel, a man who has also acted recklessly and secretively in three such cases last year.

(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 23 years and have more than 10,000 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, SNAPclohessy@aol.com), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com), Peter Isely (414-429-7259, peterisely@yahoo.com), Barbara Dorris (314-862-7688 home, 314-503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com)