OR--Victims blast Portland archbishop over predator priest

For immediate release: Wednesday, Aug. 19

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, [email protected])

If an Oregon Catholic priest wanted by the law has fled overseas, we suspect his church supervisors told or encouraged him to do so.

We’re saddened but not surprised by the news that Father Ysrael Bien of Sherwood may have left the country. Over the past 26 years, we’ve seen dozens or hundreds of cases like this in which accused sex offender priests have left the US, escaping law enforcement, while their Catholic colleagues and supervisors claim to be “shocked.”   

(Just today, an admitted Newark predator priest says two fellow church staff told him to escape to Ecuador, where he’s now a school teacher. See Newark Star Ledger story about Fr. Manuel Gallo Espinoza: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/08/exclusive_priest_who_fled_country_admits_sex_with.html

We’re glad that charges have at last been filed against Fr. Bien.  We join the police in asking anyone with any information about abuse or cover up to come forward at once.

In the future, Archbishop Alexander Samples and other Catholic Church officials should insist that accused predator priests turn over their passports to their bishops so there’s no chance they can flee overseas.

We hope that law enforcement will investigate whether individual church officials helped Fr. Bien escape. If so, we hope they will be charged. That’s the only real way to deter cover ups in the Catholic church in the present and future.

A prosecutor recently called the St. Paul archdiocese’s claim to monitor accused priests "a sham." We strongly suspect this is true of church “monitoring” claims all across the US.

"We were falsely led to believe that the Archdiocese had an effective program in place" to monitor priests, that prosecutor, John Choi, said. He’s one of tens of thousands who’ve been misled by Catholic officials.

So for the safety of kids and the prevention of more crimes, we strongly urge anyone with information or suspicions about Fr. Bien call police, expose wrongdoing, protect kids and start healing.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP was founded in 1988 and has more than 20,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)  

Contact - David Clohessy (314-566-9790, [email protected]), Barbara Dorris (314-503-0003 cell, [email protected]), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747, [email protected])