Media Statements

Daniel O’Brien, a Circuit court judge, rejected former Catholic priest Gary Berthiaume's plea agreement after hearing victim impact statements. The jurist sentenced Berthiaume to 20 months to 15 years in prison, instead of the 366-day sentence accepted by the prosecution, saying that the punishment did not fit the crime. The former priest subsequently exercised his right to withdraw his plea. The prosecution will proceed, and Berthiaume may now be charged with the two additional counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and another count of gross indecency that were dropped as part of the plea deal.

We know that impact statements provide an opportunity for survivors of sexual abuse to express in their own words what they, their family, and others close to them have experienced because of the crime. Many victims also find that it helps provide some measure of closure to the ordeal the abuse caused. Judge O'Brien heard from several survivors, including two men who described how they were "too scared as kids to report the assaults, which led to shame, guilt, and problems with social interaction — some of which continue still, nearly 50 years later." The men also expressed anger, not only at Berthiaume but also at leaders of the Catholic Church who protected priests suspected of or known to have sexually abused young parishioners. One of the victims went so far as to call Berthiaume “a demon who disguised himself as a man of God.”  We applaud the survivors who offered their statements and painted a clearer picture of the true depth of the harm caused by Berthiaume and the Church that protected him. 

For Immediate Release: January 6, 2022

Twenty years after the passing of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, its director of implementation has written a piece for a Jesuit magazine extolling the changes in the American Catholic Church and boldly asserting that children are safer today. We here at SNAP do not agree with this rosy assessment. We believe that the reported incidents of abuse of boys and girls by Catholic clergy have gone down substantially since 2002 merely because of how and when survivors of child sex abuse report.

The simple fact is that according to our records-keeping over the past two years, every month two more Catholic clerics or staffers are arrested for contemporaneous abuse. Additionally, each month more and more priests are outed as abusers, too many of whom are still alive and in ministry. What this means is that any child around them, ever, was not safe until the arrest was made. In addition, delayed disclosure is a reality: the average age of a survivor coming forward to report child sexual abuse is 52.  This means that it is far more likely that survivors who were abused in the years since the charter was implemented have not yet spoken out. It is difficult to take the author’s claims seriously about the Church being "safer" when new arrests, and new abusers being named, is a monthly occurrence.

(For Immediate Release January 4, 2021) 

Gerald J. Howard, also known as Carmen Sita, passed away in prison last fall. According to an email from the Missouri Department of Corrections Constituent Services which was passed along to SNAP, the former Catholic priest died on September 19, 2021. We hope that his victims can now breathe easier knowing that he will never again be in a position to hurt children.

Carmen Sita worked as a priest in the Archdiocese of Newark from his ordination in 1976 until 1982. In 1982, he was charged with sexually assaulting a young boy and distributing drugs. The cleric pleaded guilty in 1983 and received a sentence of 5 years probation. The Church apparently then briefly sent him for psychiatric treatment at the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.

Astonishingly, but not surprisingly, Sita, who had legally changed his name to Gerald Howard, was then allowed to go back to work as a clergyman in the Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1983. In 2009, a lawsuit accusing Sita/Howard of sexually assaulting a boy in Missouri that very same year was settled for $600K.  

(FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JANUARY 3, 2022)

SNAP responds as yet another priest in the Ft. Wayne-South Bend Catholic Diocese is removed

Fr. Eric Burgener, ordained in 2017 for the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend,  has been removed from public ministry after the Diocese received "credible allegations" of "serious boundary violations" with an adult woman parishioner. In a letter to the faithful shared on New Year's Day, it was disclosed that the survivor came forward on December 5th. While it is unclear exactly when Fr. Burgener was forced to step down, we cannot help but wonder if the announcement was delayed until after the usually robust Christmas donations were collected.

The former director of the Diocese of Arlington's Office of Child Protection and Safety has been indicted on charges of sexually assaulting a child. We are grateful to know that the Office of the Attorney General is still working on getting these criminals prosecuted and exposed.

A Delaware bankruptcy judge on Tuesday pushed the confirmation hearing for the Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) Chapter 11 plan back a month, saying there are too many depositions to take and too many legal issues to sort out to start the hearing in January. According to Law360.com, Congregations affiliated with the United Methodist Church have agreed to contribute $30 million to a fund for victims who say they were molested as youngsters in the Boy Scouts of America, an attorney said Tuesday.

Representatives may claim that bankruptcy is a way to ensure that all victims receive a payout, but this a dodge. This is not about the cost of these cases but simply about keeping secrets as they are, a secret. We hope victims and their counsel join with us in voicing outrage over these legal tactics and demand the transparency these organizations promised so long ago.

In the second pre-trial hearing held yesterday for Theodore McCarrick, a defrocked Catholic Cardinal and former ‘prince of the church’, a motion for transcript, audio, and video recordings of depositions related to the criminal charges against McCarrick was filed by the prosecution. McCarrick is the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to face criminal charges in the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Church for decades. While McCarrick was not present in the courtroom for proceedings on December 21, 2021, his defense attorney was there in representation.  McCarrick faces three counts of indecent assault and battery. A notorious abuser, this latest trial is related to claims that McCarrick sexually assaulted a teenager during a 1974 wedding in Massachusetts. The former Cardinal pleaded not guilty to the charges this past September.

For immediate release: December 21, 2021

A self-admitted pedophile and ex-priest from a Chicago-based Catholic group has finally been found guilty of some of the myriad crimes he committed against children. We are thrilled that this highly dangerous man will finally be taken off the streets and applaud the brave young women and their attorneys who helped ensure justice would be done in this case.

Richard Daschbach, a former priest from the Chicago-based Society of the Divine Word (SVD), was defrocked by Catholic officials years ago. But by washing their hands of Daschbach, Church leaders essentially set him free to abuse children without any supervision. Even though he was not technically a priest, Daschbach still presented himself as such and enjoyed a celebrity status on the island of East Timor where he has lived for decades, running an orphanage called Topu Honis Shelter Home.  

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, December 21, 2021

In an attempt to protect a man accused of abusing at least three girls he coached on his volleyball team, Catholic officials in South Bend are using the appalling tactic of trying to force the survivors to be named publicly. This is little more than an effort to scare the young women who have brought this suit forward and we hope that this brazen attempt at intimidation is thrown out by the judge.

These three women deserve praise and applause for reporting the grooming and harassment that they experienced at the hands of Justin Cochran, their former volleyball coach. If Church leaders truly cared about rooting out sexual abuse, they would be working with these women to ensure abusers and enablers are removed and that future students in their schools are protected. The fact that the Diocese of South Bend is choosing to react with intimidation, attempting to publicly expose these brave survivors, speaks volumes as to why sexual abuse remains such a significant problem within the Roman Catholic Church.

(For Immediate Release December 20, 2021) 

New report exposes systemic sexual abuse of children within the Spanish Catholic Church

Early in December, El Pais, a newspaper in Spain, delivered a 385-page report to Pope Francis detailing the sexual abuse of hundreds of children at the hands of 251 members of the clergy over the last eight decades. Typical cases involved teachers who for years abused entire classes of children. 

The report provides details for each case: order/diocese, date, initials of perpetrators, etc. When this information is added to the many hundreds of cases previously documented by El Pais, the report paints a picture made all the more appalling by the fact that the Spanish Catholic Church refuses to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in its midst. Spanish Church officials apparently seek to deny that there is a problem, or at least attempt to minimize its scope. However, this has not prevented the Church from paying out over two million euros to victims in order to buy their silence.  

Spain is the latest in a long list of countries (United States, France, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Australia) in which the systemic sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy has been uncovered - in this case by a newspaper. As is customary in these cases, the Pope has referred the dossier to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  The CDF, originally charged with defending the Church from heresy, was previously known as the Inquisition. We here at SNAP hope that the CDF will root out those who commit appalling crimes against children as vigorously as it combatted heretics during the Middle Ages. 

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] )  

(SNAP, the Survivors Network, is the world's oldest and largest support group for victims of sexual abuse in institutional settings. SNAP was founded in 1988 and has more than 25,000 survivors and supporters in our network. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)