Blog

SNAP Leader Patti Koo who supports folks in the San Antonio and New Braunfels areas of Texas wrote an article for the Texas Crime Victim's Clearinghouse that has been published in the latest issue. Read her story below!

This blog was written by Adults Sexually Abused by Priests (ASAP)

I’m currently reading, “Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse”. It is an eye-opening history of priests and sex in the Catholic Church.

This blog was written by Adults Sexually Abused by Priests (ASAP)

While talking to a male survivor one day, I was told that he was awarded money for the emotional pain and suffering he experienced as a result of the abuse he suffered as a young man.

As the Coronavirus continues to rage across the globe and our neighbors, colleagues, and friends start practicing things like “social distancing,” self-quarantines, and work-from-home, this can lead to something that many survivors are all-too-familiar with: isolation.

Written by Rosemary O'Grady.

The Full Bench of the High Court sitting in Canberra this week is listed to hear the Appeal in M112/19 Pell and The Queen on Wednesday 11^th March.

When the Pell ‘appeal against conviction’ pursuant to S. 276 (1) (a) of the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 (Vic) lost 2:1 in the Supreme Court of Victoria: Court of Appeal in August 2019, much comment was devoted to observations that the determining majority, comprising Chief  Justice Ferguson and Court of Appeal President Maxwell, were not lawyers with long, specific expertise in Criminal Law.  Busy retired and recalled Appeal Justice Mark Weinberg, by contrast, was expert in the field.  Such comment seemed aimed at inducing a general preference for the Weinberg position, set-out in a remarkably long dissenting judgement, detailing in embarrassing application just what was wrong with the Crown case against George Pell – in the learned Appeal Judge’s opinion.

SNAP has been in Aotearoa New Zealand now for the past eight months. Many people in Aotearoa New Zealand still do not know about SNAP here or the service we provide the local communities because we are still new to the Aotearoa victims and survivors scene. But the need for our work here is evident.

This blog was written by Adults Sexually Abused by Priests (ASAP)

When I first joined SNAP, I felt like a fraud. Here were people who were raped when they were children trying to heal from horrific acts and bravely facing the church in a one-step forward, two-steps back struggle for justice and prevention. There’s not much worse than taking advantage and hurting the innocent and the helpless. Here I was, an adult who had been duped by a crazy priest who I thought had used his position to control his love life out of what I believed to be guilt and fear.

This blog was written by Adults Sexually Abused by Priests (ASAP)

It took a long time for me to wake up. Long after my abuse and harassment had ceased, I was still asleep. I still believed it was my fault and that what had happened with Fr. Jade was just the fact that he had feelings for me which he could not deal with. I had an explanation, I thought, for everything. I still missed him. I still thought….maybe if I had done something different, things wouldn’t have turned out this way.

A new documentary on the case of Sister Margaret Ann and the first conviction of a catholic priest for murdering a nun in the U.S. will air this Sunday, March 1 at 10:00 PM on Investigation Discovery. This is a fascinating case and one you should definitely tune in to learn more about!

This blog was written by Adults Sexually Abused by Priests (ASAP)

When I was a child, I grew up knowing that someday my prince would come. And when that day happened, I would then go on to live the life my mother was living, as her mother had done before her. So I grew up with that internalized view of my future. One day, a man will come along. He will fall in love with my beauty and my good heart and he will pull me onto his white horse and we will live together forever and have a lovely family with… I wanted five… five children… because you see I planned to be a housewife and full-time mother so I could have five children with no problem. And we would all live happily ever after.