Media Statements

(For Immediate Release January 31, 2022) 

On Friday, January 21, 2022, the Diocese of Portland, Maine discreetly posted the following notification on their website, among announcements about weekend special collections: following two investigations by the Diocese of Portland’s Office of Professional Responsibility, Bishop Robert Deeley accepted the recommendation of the Diocesan Review Board that the recent complaints made against Fr. Eugene Descombes and the former Fr. Renald Hallee are substantiated. We find this announcement as an attempt to downplay the allegations against these clerics and believe church officials in Portland need to make a much stronger and more sincere effort to inform their parish communities about these men. 

The complaint against Descombes concerned the sexual abuse of a minor in the mid-1950s which came to the attention of the diocese in 2021. The incident took place during a trip to Canada. Descombes, who died in 1980, was a Canadian priest who served during the summer months in Maine over the course of several years. The Archdiocese of Québec was notified of this complaint and the results of the investigation.

For immediate release: January 31, 2022

Despite being accused of sexually abusing a child in the mid-1990s, allegations against a priest from the Diocese of Wichita, KS cannot be investigated due to the statute of limitations in Kansas making prosecution impossible. We are dismayed at this outcome and hope that this news will spur legislators in Kansas to begin reforming these archaic laws immediately.

The lack of charges against Fr. Michael Schemm is yet another indictment of the archaic laws that protect predators at the expense of children. Once again, the statute of limitations has allowed allegations of abuse to go uninvestigated, potentially putting other children in Kansas at risk. It is notable that the District Attorney’s office specifically mentioned that their decision was a “legal conclusion only” and that their decision to not pursue charges is not a determination of guilt or innocence. Sadly, such a determination will not be made in a Kansas court of law.

Barriers like this will only make survivors more fearful and less willing to come forward to report their abuse. If survivors know that there is no recourse for them under the law, then there is almost no benefit to going through the pain of making a report in the first place. We hope that this news will encourage Kansans to contact their state Representatives and Senators to change the laws in their state to better protect children as opposed to those who would harm them.

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)

Fr. Dean Mathewson, a priest from the Diocese of Columbus, has been removed from ministry following allegations of child sexual abuse. The incident is said to have occurred in the 1990s while he was working at St. Francis de Sales Parish in Newark.  We now call on Catholic officials in Columbus to do outreach to ensure that parishioners at every parish and school where this man worked is informed of the allegations and that survivors and witnesses are encouraged to come forward and make a report to local law enforcement.

By our count, if the diocesan review board deems this allegation credible, Fr. Mathewson would be the 53rd clergyman to be added to the list of "credibly accused" in the Diocese of Columbus, which has 106 active parishes.  Clearly, despite rhetoric from Catholic officials, abuse within the Church is not a thing of the past. Given what we know about the delayed disclosure of abuse, and the multiple layers of trauma, we expect to learn more about cases from the late 1980s and 1990s as our current decade rolls on.

Mere days after issuing a categorical denial of the charges levied against him in a newly-released German report into clergy abuse, former Pope Benedict has now walked back his denials and admitted to being at a meeting at which the details of a priest’s pedophilic predilections were discussed. Given that the former Pope has already had to walk back claims he made in his own defense, we believe that his other claims are also likely to be lies and half-truths.

We find it incredibly ironic that Pope Benedict’s own personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, issued a statement that said some of Pope Benedict’s were “objectively false.” We are not shocked that half-hearted defenses that fly in the face of researched and established facts are being called out as lies by those close to the former Pope, and based on the report released by Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, we expect the rest of Pope Benedict’s defenses to fall by the wayside, too.

A new report into decades of abuse allegations by a law firm in Germany has shown that Pope Benedict XVI did not take action against abusive priests in four child abuse case while he was Archbishop (Josef Ratzinger). Benedict held that position from 1977-1982. The abuse of minors is reported to have continued during his time in Munich and the predator priests remained in active ministry.

The Catholic church tapped the firm of Westpfahl Spilker Wastl in Germany to investigate these matters. "Two of these cases concern abuses committed during his tenure and sanctioned by the state," lawyer Martin Pusch said as he announced the report.

To us, this is not shocking news, reports of Pope Benedict XVI and his knowledge of abuse cases have circulated since his election. However, to us, this is another self-inflicted wound and one that we at SNAP saw coming. In fact, back in 2011, SNAP leadership cautioned Vatican officials against rushing to beatify Pope John Paul II because of how he misled the public about the severity of clergy abuse, actively ignored it, and allowed it to continue.  Sadly, we see these unsavory actions and inactions surface years later after lengthy silence by church officials and painful memories harbored by victims.

(For Immediate Release January 19, 2022) 

Today, SNAP sent a letter to Sacramento Catholic Bishop Jaime Soto with five specific requests is asking that he take regarding his list of abusers. The Survivors’ Network also shared information regarding the excessive presence of abusive clergy and brothers at a local High School. We have included the letter below along with media contacts. The attachments mentioned in the letter can be obtained from the contacts listed.

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Dear Bishop Soto:

January 19, 2022

Dear Bishop Soto: Last month SNAP held a press conference outside your chancery, asking that you update your list of abusers. You can find our list of names attached. Should you have any questions about why these men should be included, please feel free to reach out. As a follow-up from our event, we have five specific actions we are asking you to take:

1. Shortly after you published your list in 2019 you said, “The list can be amended both in terms of victims and in terms of perpetrators that we don't know about.” However, despite our event, we notice that your most recent update was in November. We are asking you again today to expand your list to include the 32 additional names we have provided.
2. We also hope that you include Alfredo Beccera’s abuser. Alfredo bravely spoke out about his assault at our media event. It seems logical for you to include this perpetrator, as you already name those who abused adults under the age of 25, and Alfredo falls into this category.
3. In addition, Fr. Henry Angelino was revealed as a perpetrator on the Diocese of Fresno’s list in August. We recently discovered that he also worked in the Sacramento area. As far as we can tell, he did not work in your Diocese, but we are mentioning this because you would know for certain.
4. We would also assume that Fr. Renerio (Fr. Jong) Sabuga, Jr., would not be a controversial addition, since Pope Francis has expanded Vatican law regarding the abuse of adults, and since you have already acknowledged that the allegation was “credible.” Fr. Sabuga is still working as a priest in the Philippines, but adding him to your list might change this dangerous situation.
5. Similarly, since you included a link to the Jesuit West Province list on yours, it does not seem unreasonable to ask that those 7 names be included in the section of your list for those accused of abuse elsewhere, rather than obscured in an easily overlooked link at the bottom of the page.

The importance of being completely transparent cannot be overstated. The first benefit is to survivors, who will learn that they are not alone. This may well be the first step on the road to healing for those suffering in silence.

Another plus is being able to see patterns in what happened in the past. For example, we have attached a file with information from public records about abuse at Jesuit High School in Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests Carmichael. As you can see, of the 11 known abusers who worked at the High School, only 5 are directly named on your list. You are missing more than half of the perpetrators.

In September of 2018, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced the formation of a criminal task force to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy within the Catholic Dioceses of New Jersey. This was in the wake of the scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report, as well as renewed allegations of sexual abuse by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, including the first publicly reported assault on a child. However, there have been few updates on the progress of that investigation.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy was sworn in yesterday for his second term. He will be selecting a nominee to take the place of AG Grewal, who resigned in July. We urge Governor Murphy to make this appointment soon so that the new AG can report on the status of the Catholic abuse investigation, including whether or not the probe is an "impediment" to the release of records on former Cardinal McCarrick held by New Jersey Dioceses, and ultimately bring the investigation to a conclusion.

The Portuguese Episcopal Conference has set up an "Independent Commission" to document the scope of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy during the period 1955 to 2022. In doing so the Portuguese follow in the footsteps of the CIASE report which uncovered the shocking extent of sexual abuse in France over the last 50 years. The commission's motto is to "Give voice to silence," which captures the painful reality that most victims will be intimidated and threatened into not reporting the crime to their parents or civil authorities.

The Portuguese interdisciplinary commission of seven is headed by Pedro Strecht, a child psychologist, and includes sociologists, judges, and psychiatrists.  They will collect "testimony"  and "complaints" through online surveys and by searching through legal, diocesan, and media archives. However, Strecht emphasized that the goal is to "study" what happened, not "investigate" - even though findings may be forwarded to the Attorney General's office. This leaves us worried and wondering whether this will be one more exercise in obfuscation and the minimization of crimes by which some clergy abuse their moral authority to satisfy their depraved sexual urges. 

CONTACT:  Marc Artzrouni, SNAP Europe, ([email protected], +33 - 6 95 73 65 92), Mike McDonnell, SNAP Communications Manager,  (267-261-0578 [email protected]),Zach Hiner, SNAP Executive Director (517-974-9009, [email protected] ), Shaun Dougherty, SNAP Board President  (814-341-8386,  [email protected] )

Last week the children of Catholic abuse victim Jim Bartko took a great first step to memorialize their father’s passing, they filed a lawsuit for the harm done to Jim against the Diocese of Oakland. They were able to do this because a new law in California allows family members to recover non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering, on behalf of their deceased relative. We are grateful to Jim's children for continuing his fight for accountability from the Oakland Diocese.

While growing up in Pinole in the early 1970s, Jim said that he was abused by the serial predator priest Stephen Kiesle, then in his very first parish assignment. The college sports professional kept his secret for nearly 50 years,  but finally came forward in 2017. Jim also recounted his story in his 2020 book, Boy in the Mirror, and filed a lawsuit against the Diocese of Oakland that same year. Four days after announcing his suit at a news conference, Jim collapsed and died. The cause of death was a hemorrhage due to cirrhosis, a result of excessive drinking during the more than four decades of keeping his pain hidden.