Clergy Sex Abuse Survivor Reflects on His Reform Work
St. Louis man, David G. Clohessy, cites better victim support and resistant bishops among wins and losses in efforts to change the Catholic Church
As a child in Moberly, Missouri, David Clohessy and his siblings were abused by a Catholic priest. Although he suppressed that memory for years, eventually he got help and dedicated his life to forcing the Catholic Church to protect children and remove predator priests. (Courtesy | SNAP)
November 24, 2024
By Bill Tammeus
A 2002 series of Boston Globe articles turned a scandal about Catholic priests who sexually abuse children (and bishops who protect those priests) into a national story.
The Globe, however, wasn’t the first newspaper to expose this reprehensible crime. Credit for that goes to the independent, Kansas City-based National Catholic Reporter. NCR was writing about this years before the Globe.
None of this surprises David G. Clohessy, who lives in St. Louis but whose work frequently brings him to Kansas City. He’s been trying to ensure victims are heard and church officials are held accountable. He’s former national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and currently volunteer director of Missouri SNAP.
But, developments in this scandal evolve slowly. Just a few weeks ago, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, 10 years after it was created, issued its first report, concluding that the church still fails to ensure that abuse cases are dealt with adequately and saying that the Vatican office charged with processing complaints is slow and secretive.
Clohessy, a priest abuse victim as a child in Moberly, Missouri, knows much historical context about this scandal and can describe what’s worked and what’s changed. (Not surprisingly, he and SNAP have made enemies within the church, but he’s persisted in this work.)
“The fundamental achievement,” he says, “is just the fact that tens, or maybe hundreds of thousands, of childhood sexual abuse victims feel less alone, less ashamed, less confused. Many survivors now know there’s someplace they can turn to for help.”
His abuse, he says, began with “a very familiar pattern.” The perpetrator “ingratiated himself into our family, befriended my parents, and ended up molesting me and three of my siblings, one of whom became a priest and went on to molest kids himself.”
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