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The
Survivors Network of
those Abused by Priests
SNAP Press
Statement
Statement
Regarding Baltimore Priest Pleads
Guilty
November 8, 2005
Statement by David Clohessy of
St. Louis,
National director of SNAP,
"Today, in a Baltimore County, MD, courtroom, former Catholic priest
Jerome F. Toohey pled guilty to child sex abuse.
Toohey had already been defrocked by the Archdiocese of Baltimore in
1993, after credible allegations were made that Toohey had molested a
male student while Toohey was employed at John Carroll School in Belair,
MD.
The abuse that led to todayâ€s trial took place during
the Eighties, when the victim was a student at Calvert Hall College High
School in Towson, MD, where Toohey worked as a chaplain.
We are grateful that citizens will again be warned about and hopefully
protected from a clearly dangerous man. We hope that Toohey will spend
considerable time behind bars but we worry, that between now and his sentencing
in February, he might flee the country.
We are grateful to Toohey's victim, who had the courage and wisdom to
pursue criminal charges against him. It's always hard for a victim of
a sex crime to come forward. It's even harder when one's perpetrator is
a trusted Catholic cleric. So we praise him for his strength, his bravery,
and his commitment to protecting other vulnerable youngsters
from a serial predator.
Today's court action may, we hope, provide some comfort and healing to
all of Toohey's victims. At the same time, however, we urge them to stay
in therapy, self-help groups, recovery programs, and to realize that even
Toohey's criminal conviction won't suddenly or magically ameliorate the
suffering that his victims continue to experience.
We also urge others who were hurt by Toohey to come forward and get the
help and healing they deserve, and others who witnessed or suspected his
crimes to contact law enforcement, so he might be further prosecuted."
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Survivors Network
of those Abused by Priests
www.snapnetwork.org
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