Dallas Police Raid Chancery Office, SNAP Responds

We applaud Texas law enforcement officials for raiding the “secret archives” of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. We are glad that police and prosecutors are taking the issue of clergy abuse in Texas seriously and are not just relying on the promises of church officials.

While the Diocese of Dallas released a list of publicly accused priests back in January, we suspected that the list was incomplete and have police and prosecutors to investigate further. As we have seen in places like Buffalo, Pennsylvania and Illinois, catholic dioceses have not consistently been forthright in disclosing full lists of credibly accused priests, nor providing information about the church officials who covered-up their crimes.

We hope that this raid today sheds more light on the clergy abuse scandal as it relates to the Diocese of Dallas and will uncover the full truth of who knew what, when they knew it, and what steps church officials took in response to allegations of sexual abuse.

Institutions cannot police themselves and it is only through strong action from law enforcement that the full truth of their scandals can be revealed. We applaud the move and hope that it will inspire others who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Texas to make a report to law enforcement officials immediately.

CONTACT: Lisa Kendzior ([email protected], 817-773-5907), Paul Petersen ([email protected], 972-569-0995), Zach Hiner ([email protected], 517-974-9009)

(SNAP, the Survivors Network, has been providing support for victims of sexual abuse in institutional settings for 30 years. We have more than 25,000 survivors and supporters in our network. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)