TX--Accused Notre Dame predator priest still on the job; SNAP responds

For immediate release: Friday, May 29

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

Catholic officials are putting innocent children at risk by keeping an accused predator priest on the job even though he was sued for child sex abuse more last week ago.

We demand that staff at Notre Dame, the Ft. Wayne diocese and the San Antonio diocese suspend him immediately. They are acting recklessly and callously and are breaking the US bishops’ child sex abuse policy.

http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/breaking-notre-dame-priest-and-professor-named-in-texas-sexual-assult-lawsuit/33232748

Since 2002, the US Catholic church hierarchy has formally and repeatedly pledged it would suspend credibly accused child molesting clerics. Yet a high-profile priest and professor, Fr. Virgilio Elizondo, was accused last week in a civil lawsuit of sexually assaulting a child in Texas in the 1980s.

Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller and Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins are needlessly taking risks with the safety of boys and girls. They should

-- immediately suspend Fr. Elizondo from any and all positions,

-- send him to a remote, secure, independently-run treatment center, and

-- use their vast resources to aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes by this cleric or cover ups by his church or university supervisors.

Some at the university say Fr. Elizondo spends little time on campus. That doesn’t matter. It takes only seconds for a child molester to shove his tongue in a boy’s mouth or his hands down a girl’s pants.

Anyone with information or suspicions about clergy sex crimes or cover ups should call secular authorities, not church officials.

(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 cell, [email protected]), Barbara Dorris (314-503-0003 cell, [email protected]), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747, [email protected])