TX--Ted Cruz gives role to “victim hater” - Victims respond

For immediate release: Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Ted Cruz gives role to “victim hater”

He appointed clergyman to advisory board

That minister called a support group “evil-doers”

“They’re just as reprehensible as sex criminals,” TX preacher said

He heads Ft. Worth seminary and has been a national Baptist official

A presidential hopeful has named a prominent Baptist minister to an advisory board even though the clergyman once called a support group for clergy sex abuse victims “evil-doers.”

https://baptistnews.com/2016/03/02/paige-patterson-named-to-cruz-advisory-council/

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has tapped Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, to the candidate’s Religious Liberty Advisory Council, despite Patterson’s calling the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) “just as reprehensible as sex criminals.”

The appointment came in the same week that “Spotlight” won two Oscars, including “Best Picture.” The film shows how SNAP played a helpful role in exposing more than 250 child molesting Boston area clerics.

“Patterson made a hurtful, mean-spirited and Trump-like effort to bully suffering victims into staying silent,” said SNAP director David Clohessy. “To equate child molesters to child sex abuse victims may be most vicious comparison possible.”

“In our 27 years, we’ve been insulted often, but virtually never with such vitriol from such a prominent and purportedly ‘Godly’ man like Patterson,” Clohessy said.

http://stopbaptistpredators.blogspot.com/2016/03/why-ted-cruz-should-see-spotlight.html

At the time of Patterson’s remarks, SNAP had raised questions about his actions in the child sex abuse case of Darrell Gilyard, “a pastor whom Patterson had mentored,” according to Christa Brown of StopBaptistPredators.org. “By the time Gilyard was convicted on child sex charges in Florida, over forty young women and underage teens had made allegations against him. According to the Dallas Morning News, many of those claims had been reported directly to Patterson, but to no avail,” Brown wrote.

Cruz should reverse himself and oust Patterson from his panel, SNAP maintains.

Clohessy also urged victims of Baptist child molesters to ignore Patterson’s “self-serving sentiments” and speak up so that “kids will be safer and cover ups will be prevented.”

“We urge every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups in Baptist churches or institutions – especially at Patterson’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary – to protect kids by calling police, get help by calling therapists, expose wrongdoers by calling journalists, get justice by calling attorneys, and get comfort by calling support groups like ours. This is how kids will be safer, adults will recover, criminals will be prosecuted and cover ups will be deterred and the truth will surface.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP was founded in 1988 and has 30,000 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]), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747,[email protected])

Paige Patterson named to Cruz advisory council - by BOB ALLEN |  MARCH 2, 2016

A Southern Baptist Convention seminary president has been named to a Religious Liberty Advisory Council created by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, is part of a 19-member group announced Feb. 29 to guide policies to reverse what the Cruz campaign termed “unprecedented attacks on freedom both at home and abroad.”

“Religious liberty is the first freedom guaranteed to Americans under the Constitution, and ensuring the protection of that right has been a priority my entire adult life,” Cruz said in a campaign press release. “Increasingly, renegade government officials seek to coerce people of faith either to act in a manner that violates their faith or forfeit their career. When I . .  .

Read full article here