Media Statements

For immediate release: June 8, 2022

A former janitor at a Catholic Church in Maywood, California, is pursuing a lawsuit for damages against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. In her complaint, the woman, who then worked as a custodian at the church, accused an associate pastor of groping her in the rectory and trying to coerce her into his bed on July 31, 2019, according to a suit that was filed in 2020. SNAP applauds this woman for coming forward and sharing her story but is extremely troubled by the facts reported in this case.

The associate pastor, Fr. Primitivo Gonzalez, was apparently removed from his position at St. Rose of Lima Church in August of 2019, within 24 hours of the custodian's complaint to the Archdiocese. The assault was also said to have been reported by the Archdiocese to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Apparently, Fr. Gonzalez admitted his wrongdoing, was removed from ministry and sent to live in Northern California with his brother. While we commend the Archdiocese for quickly removing the priest from ministry and reporting the abuse to law enforcement, we are not satisfied that it did all that it should have done in this case.

Specifically, while the Archdiocese claimed that there were no earlier complaints against Fr. Gonzalez, we find it hard to believe that the priest simply woke up on July 31, 2019, and decided to assault the female janitor. Instead, we suspect others like her,  desperately needing their jobs and very likely devout Catholics, were simply too afraid and ashamed to come forward. We wonder if the Archdiocese did outreach to the others who may have been in harm's way and were also in need of help? It certainly would have been the right and decent thing to do.

We are also not clear why Fr. Gonzalez was not criminally prosecuted for assault. In a similar case in Northern California, the Catholic cleric accused of assaulting female employees and a volunteer, Rev. Varghese “George” Alengadan, was charged with one count of misdemeanor sexual battery. Unfortunately, he fled the country before his arraignment. We hope that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles did not interfere in the prosecution of this case. Even if Fr. Gonzalez had already been diagnosed with dementia from which he died in December of 2020, the priest was still a dangerous man.

CONTACT: Melanie Sakoda, SNAP Survivor Support Coordinator ([email protected], 925-708-6175), Dan McNevin, SNAP Treasurer ([email protected], 415-341-6417), Mike McDonnell, SNAP Communications Manager ([email protected], 267- 261-0578), Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director ([email protected], 517-974-9009)

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

(For Immediate Release June 7, 2022) 

A Rhode Island Roman Catholic priest, who was removed from ministry in 2009, has been indicted on a charge of sexually assaulting a male teenager more than 40 years ago. Fr. Kevin Fisette is scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday for first-degree sexual assault.

In 2019, the Diocese of Providence released a list of 50 clerics, religious order priests, and deacons it deemed "credibly accused" of the sexual abuse of children, including Fr. Fisette. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha opened a review of those accusations that same year after the Diocese agreed to give the Attorney General and the Rhode Island State Police access to all complaints since 1950.

Fr. Fisette is currently living in Killingly, Connecticut. He worked for the Diocese at Our Lady of Victory Church, Ashaway, in 1981; Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, 1981-1982; St. Mary Church, Cranston, 1982-1985; St. Catherine of Siena Church, Warwick, 1985-1990; Our Lady of Providence Preparatory Seminary High School, Providence, 1987-1988; St. James Church, West Warwick, 1990-1993; Bishop Hendricken High School, Warwick, 1989-1997; Pawtuxet Valley CYO, Warwick, 1990-1993; SS. Peter & Paul Church, West Warwick, 1993-1997; Holy Name of Jesus Church, Providence, 1997-2004; Father Barry CYO Center, Pawtucket, 1998-1999; St. Leo the Great Church, Pawtucket, 2004-2009.

The priest is being charged with abusing a child in Burrillville between Jan. 1, 1981, and Dec. 31, 1982, when he was working as a deacon at Our Lady of Victory Parish in  Ashaway and as a chaplain at Rhode Island Hospital. There was an earlier accusation of sexual abuse from the 1980s that a Diocesan investigation deemed "credible," which resulted in Fr. Fisette's removal from ministry in 2009. Authorities declined to prosecute Fr. Fisette at that time, citing the statute of limitations for second and third-degree sexual assault, and inconsistencies in the victim's statements. But there is no statute of limitations for first-degree sexual assault.

Despite being removed from ministry in 2009, Fr. Fisette visited schools and worked in the presence of children after he got a job at Goodwill.

Fr. Fisette is the fourth cleric to be indicted as part of the Attorney General's review of the Diocese. To us, this speaks volumes about the importance of secular investigations and sheds additional light on the glaring problem of clergy sexual abuse, particularly in a heavily Catholic state like Rhode Island. Law enforcement probes into Diocesan investigations not only protect Catholic children, but also the public. 

CONTACT: Mike McDonnell, SNAP Communications Manager([email protected], 267-261-0578), Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director ([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)

(For Immediate Release June 2, 2022) 

Catholic officials in Philadelphia have concluded their compensation program after paying nearly $78 million to 438 survivors of child sexual abuse. We are glad that these survivors have received acknowledgment of their pain and suffering, as well as some restitution. We know that because of them, more information about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Pennsylvania has been made public. Additionally, without the work done by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and the brave survivors and advocates who work tirelessly for reform, this compensation program would probably never have been opened and these survivors would likely still be suffering in silence.

Our concern is this. In November of 2018, approximately 342 IRRP (Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program) packets were sent to already known victims by the AOP. A staggering 812 claimants inquired about eligibility, 623 claims were formally submitted and 144 were denied compensation. By doing simple math, nearly 100 additional claims followed the initial packets mailed to the known 342. Our questions are obvious. Who are the accused clergy members? Where did the accused work? How many of the clergy named in victim claims are on the diocesan list of credibly accused priests? More importantly, how many are not on the list?

We are concerned about those whose claim was denied, rejected, or did not complete the claim process. What support is being offered to these individuals who have held the years of pain and liability themselves? Clearly, there needs to be more transparency around these issues. Archbishop Nelson Pérez promised at his installation mass in 2020, to “work with hope, that we will be the source of healing.” These unanswered questions render the Archbishop’s statement mute. 

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is one of the country’s oldest, most prestigious, and most real estate wealthy dioceses. $78 million to 438 survivors of abuse by the clergy are only a fraction of the cost to society of nearly $900,000 in a lifetime of damage. Aside from those who participated in this program, the statute of limitations reform for those who have been time-barred from justice, or even now with denied or rejected claims, hopefully, is on the horizon for victims in Pennsylvania who wait for their day in court. 

CONTACT: Mike McDonnell, SNAP Communications Manager([email protected], 267-261-0578), Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director ([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)

(For Immediate Release June 2, 2022) 

On Thursday, June 2, 2022, at noon Rome time, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Robert Barron the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota). Bishop Barron was ordained a priest in 1986 in the Archdiocese of Chicago and appointed to the theological faculty of Mundelein Seminary in 1992. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. He was twice a scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican.

He served as the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary University of St. Mary of the Lake from 2012 until 2015. On July 21, 2015, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Barron to be Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He was ordained bishop on September 8, 2015.

‘Word on Fire’ has made recent headlines with a scandal. As reported by NCR, ‘Frustrated by poor communication and a workplace culture they say has been warped by secrecy and hypermasculinity, at least a half-dozen Word on Fire employees in recent months have resigned from the Catholic outlet founded by Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron.’

We hope that Bishop Barron will usher in a new era of transparency and openness for the Diocese of Winona-Rochester. In particular, the current list of credibly accused priests seems thin. We urge the bishop-elect to make it a priority to see this list is accurate and to include nuns, religious order priests, and brothers; along with seminarians and laity who have had allegations found to be credibly accused.

When Barron takes the helm, he can immediately prove his dedication to transparency and prevention by updating list of accused priests, particularly by including with each entry when the diocese learned about the allegations, and what actions were taken in response.

CONTACT: Mike McDonnell, SNAP Communications Manager([email protected], 267-261-0578), Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director ([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)

(For Immediate Release May 31, 2022) 

We hope that Bishop Robert McElroy’s elevation to Cardinal signals a change in the California Catholic landscape. The current archbishops of Los Angeles and San Francisco, whose seniority is now usurped by the new Cardinal, have resisted transparency on behalf of sexual abuse survivors. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone alienates many by refusing to do the bare minimum of publishing a list of abusers from San Francisco. At least San Diego has a list and adds to it.

To be sure, Bishop McElroy has work to do to gain credibility; he ignored the advice of Richard Sipe, an esteemed clergy sexual abuse expert regarding Sipe’s warnings about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. In the end, Sipe was right, and McElroy was mistaken. His list is short, as being proven by the lawsuits now piling up.

Now that Cardinal-elect McElroy has been given the red hat, we hope he asserts himself by resolving to do all that he can to bring transparency about the abuse crisis forward: news reports say that nearly 100 new cases have been filed against his diocese and that Southern California now is facing over 500 new cases.

McElroy was ordained in 1979, 43 years ago. It is poetic to us that the typical survivor needs about forty years to report the abuse that occurred. That means that souls damaged around his ordination, as he began his climb to power, were slowly making their way to speaking out. Those voices are just now being heard.

In 1985 Fr. Tom Doyle’s earliest warnings were made to the Vatican and ignored. McElroy himself, while in San Francisco, was the Vicar General and lived with priests who, it turned out, were abusing kids. As Vicar General under the Archbishop (and later Cardinal) William Levada, he surely was dealing with reports of sexual abuse by clergy, and doing the bidding of Levada, a renowned suppresser of the truth who eventually worked for Pope Benedict as the head of the Vatican office in charge of investigating abuse. Benedict himself is now directly implicated in covering up abuse.

Given Cardinal-elect McElroy’s direct experience, we believe and hope that as a Cardinal, a cleric empowered to vote for the next pope, he will use his enhanced power and position to fight for survivors, even if that means exposing earlier secrets, he may have guarded because of his obedience to more powerful bishops and cardinals. He now is among the most powerful voices in the worldwide Catholic church. He should use this opportunity to right some wrongs, including those which he handled. The church's central, ongoing crisis is not too many conservative or non-conservative prelates or too few prelates, it is the continuing clergy sex abuse and cover-up crisis.

CONTACT: Mike McDonnell, SNAP Communications Manager([email protected], 267-261-0578), Melanie Sakoda, SNAP Survivor Support Coordinator ([email protected], 925-708-6175) Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director ([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)

(For Immediate Release May 27, 2022) 

Many will applaud Southern Baptist Convention leaders for releasing this list of abusers today. We are not among them. This is the bare minimum step that SBC leadership needed to take following the most recent report that has shed light on decades of abuse and cover-up within our nation’s largest Protestant denomination. If SBC leadership wants applause, they have much, much more to do.

While the publication of these known abusers is critical to ensuring parishioners and children at SBC churches throughout the country are protected, SBC leadership has dragged their feet on taking this simple step for many years. We know that the idea of a database of abusers was suggested to convention leadership as early as 2007 and that this effort to support public safety was refused by church leadership. We can only wonder that, with today’s release, what other information has been redacted or hidden by these leaders?

There is no doubt that SBC leaders needed to act and act quickly in the wake of this week's bombshell report. While we are glad that they didn’t take additional weeks to release this initial, assuredly short, list of names, we are also not waiting for further action from the church. No institution can police itself, and regardless of what steps are taken internally by the SBC, what must happen for true prevention, healing, and justice is the involvement of outside, secular officials.

(For Immediate Release May 26, 2022) 

The Southern Baptist Convention has established a confidential hotline for survivors of sexual abuse in churches to make reports, an unprecedented step for the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination.

While this may appear to be a step forward, we remain highly skeptical. It has the feel of a hastily devised public relations move designed to control the aftermath of the scathing report. We cannot stress enough the importance to survivors of having a place to share their information where they know that they will be not only be listened to but more importantly, where they will also be believed.

Many victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers fear coming forward with information about cases of abuse by clergy. There are many reasons for this fear, whether it is due to feelings of shame, or to worries of being blamed or of being singled out as a troublemaker.

(For Immediate Release May 25, 2022) 

During the Southern Baptist Convention executive meeting held yesterday, top leaders and several committee members said that they will release a secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse. They also vowed to work toward changing the culture of the denomination and to listen more attentively to survivors’ voices and stories. The report is expected to contain new details about former Jacksonville Pastor Darrell Gilyard. He was a minister at Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville in 2007.

Accusations against Pastor Gilyard have apparently been made by at least 44 women, and ranged from grooming and groping to rape and attempted rape. The leaders who were told about these crimes may also have been complicit in at least one crime: the crime of covering up. If these leaders were mandatory reporters in Florida or elsewhere, the Attorneys General of those states should be investigating them.

What has emerged from the report is a sort of Baptist Leadership Playbook that echoes the Catholic Bishops Playbook. Deny the accusations, move the perpetrators, intimidate, shame, and blame the victims. Included in this playbook is the use of minimizing, vague terminology: a pastor calls the abuse a "sin" and refers to the moving around of known abusive pastors as “sin." These actions need to be called what they really are, they are crimes.

(For Immediate Release May 24, 2022) 

A former Staten Island priest who in January was arrested on charges related to child sexual abuse now faces more charges. Fr. James Garisto, who is now the subject of four allegations of sexual abuse, has previously been accused and sued of child sexual abuse and now is facing potential criminal penalties. We applaud the brave survivors in each case against Garisto who have come forward and hope that they are able to find a semblance of justice and healing through this process.

Fr. Garisto was first accused of sexual abuse in a civil suit, filed in July 2021, that was able to see a courtroom thanks to New York’s Child Victims Act. Then, in January 2022, he was arrested and charged for allegedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy while Garisto lived in Fishtown, PA yet was still employed by the Archdiocese of New York. Now, four months after his initial arrest in Philadelphia, Garisto has again been arrested on three charges: endangering the welfare of children, corruption of minors, and indecent assault of a person less than 13 years of age.

(For Immediate Release May 24, 2022) 

In a huge victory for victims of clergy abuse, a federal bankruptcy judge granted survivors permission to resume their previously paused actions against hundreds of independent Catholic corporations that did not seek bankruptcy protection. The judge's scathing ruling slammed what he perceived as the Diocese’s hardball tactics.

“Portraying itself as a victim, trying to do right by the Abuse Survivors, the Diocese predicts that if state court litigation is permitted to move forward against any of the Catholic Corporations, ‘the Diocese may be forced to pursue a non-consensual plan of reorganization,'” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Paul R. Warren wrote in a 16-page decision and order. “That is a pretty heavy-handed threat to be leveled at the people who are the real victims here—the Abuse Survivors.”

To us, this victory shows the lengths that the Diocese of Rochester and many other Catholic dioceses throughout the country are willing to go to deny justice to victims. The tactics used by the Diocese attempted to minimize their responsibility for the injuries to survivors and to protect their assets rather than caring for those who have already suffered for decades because of unconscionable decisions made by Catholic officials: the victims of clergy sexual abuse.

We celebrate this victory with those survivors who can now have their day in court.

 CONTACT: Mike McDonnell, SNAP Communications Manager ([email protected] 267-261-0578) Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director ([email protected], 517-974-9009) Shaun Dougherty, SNAP Board President ([email protected] 814-341-8386)

(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)