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Chicago, Ill., Feb 6, 2017 / 05:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Another leader of a controversial group representing survivors of clergy sexual abuse has resigned, denying that the resignation is related to a lawsuit that claimed the group was engaged in kickbacks and other unethical behavior.

Barbara Blaine of the Survivors’ Network of those Abuse by Priests resigned effective Feb. 3, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Blaine said a lawsuit filed last month against the Chicago-based organization had no bearing on her resignation and compared it to previous lawsuits she said had no merit. She said the discussions of her departure had been ongoing and it had been a great honor to serve the organization.

“Change however is inevitable,” she said.

In mid-January former employee Gretchen Rachel Hammond, who worked as a development director at SNAP, claimed to have been wrongly fired for raising objections to what she said was a kickback scheme. The former employee’s lawsuit alleged that the organization refers them to lawyers who themselves donate to the organization. It also charged that SNAP does not provide significant counseling help to abuse victims.

The suit further charged that SNAP is motivated by its leaders' “personal and ideological animus against the Catholic Church.”

Blaine flatly denied the lawsuit’s claims, saying: “The allegations are not true. This will be proven in court. SNAP leaders are now, and always have been, devoted to following the SNAP mission: to help victims heal and to prevent further sexual abuse.”

The lawsuit named as defendants SNAP, Blaine, past executive director David Clohessy, and outreach director Barbara Dorris.

Clohessy resigned as executive director effective Dec. 31, though the change was not widely known until after the latest lawsuit was filed. The former executive director, who had worked at the organization since 1991, also denied his resignation had anything to do with the lawsuit.

Dorris has now become managing director of SNAP.

In her resignation statement, Blaine said she founded the organization 29 years ago because a priest who had abused her remained in ministry and because she felt “immense pain” from the alleged abuse inflicted on her as an eighth grader by a priest who taught at her school.

“I knew there were other survivors out there and wondered if they felt the same debilitating hurt and if so, how they coped with it. I thought they might hold the wisdom I lacked. I looked for other survivors and asked if they would be willing to talk,” she said in a statement.

SNAP has run into other legal problems.

In August 2016 a federal judge ruled that the group made false statements “negligently and with reckless disregard for the truth” against a St. Louis priest to try to convict him on abuse charges.

The organization also sought to have the International Criminal Court investigate Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity related to alleged failures to stop sex abuse. Many critics considered the effort to be frivolous and the court rejected the request in mid-2013.

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By Dennis Sadowski

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The resignation of the president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests opens the door for a new generation of leaders, said a top volunteer within the organization.

"SNAP is full of vibrant leaders," Joelle Casteix, the organization's Western regional director, told Catholic News Service Feb. 6. She said the resignation Feb. 3 of Barbara Blaine, who founded SNAP and served as its president for 29 years, was not totally unexpected.

"The time was not what anyone had planned, but any vibrant organization can always find people to stand up and lead an organization into its next phase," Casteix said.

"For us, it's always heartbreaking when a leader departs," she added. "The true heart and mission of SNAP will always be with its volunteer leadership."

Blaine's resignation was announced to SNAP's volunteer members Feb. 4. Mary Ellen Kruger, who chairs the SNAP board of directors, said in an email Feb. 6 to CNS that Blaine stepped down for personal reasons "that have nothing to do with the lawsuit."

The action came less than three weeks after a former SNAP director of development, Gretchen Rachel Hammond, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit charging that the organization is more interested in fundraising and taking kickbacks from lawyers suing the Catholic Church than in helping survivors.

Blaine had been a vocal critic of organizations, particularly the Catholic Church, for responses to clergy sexual abuse. She often was joined by David Clohessy, SNAP's former longtime executive director, who resigned Dec. 31.

Religion News Service reported Jan. 24 that Clohessy said his decision was unrelated to the lawsuit. "My last day was five weeks ago, before this lawsuit ever happened," he told RNS. The suit was filed Jan. 17. In response to an email query from CNS to confirm that information Jan. 26, Blaine said: "David resigned Dec. 31, 2016, and it had nothing to do with the lawsuit."

SNAP is considered the largest and best-known advocacy organization for survivors of clerical abuse.

Hammond's lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, accuses SNAP of being "a commercial organization" and "premised upon farming out abuse survivors as clients for attorneys, who then file lawsuits on behalf of the survivors and collect settlement checks from the Catholic Church."

Hammond worked for SNAP from July 2011 to February 2013. She claims she was fired in retaliation for a series of discoveries she made about the way settlements were being handled, and that the stress caused by SNAP's treatment of her sent her to the hospital four times and resulted in a series of health problems.

The lawsuit also asserted that SNAP "is motivated by its directors' and officers' personal and ideological animus against the Catholic Church." In 2011, SNAP helped publicize an attempt in Europe to bring charges in the International Criminal Court against Pope Benedict XVI and other Vatican officials for crimes against humanity for allegedly "concealing and tolerating" clergy abuse. In June 2013, the head of that court declined to pursue such a case.

On Feb. 1, Kruger addressed the lawsuit's charges on the organization's website. She said SNAP had never been a counseling organization, but rather a volunteer-based, peer support network of survivors who help each other through a variety of actions and in local groups in 22 states.

Kruger also acknowledged that SNAP refers abuse survivors to attorneys "in an effort to bring accountability to those that have condoned and perpetuated this abuse for decades." She said if abuse survivors are unable to "fight back against the system, systemic abuse of authority would continue unabated."

The statement denied that SNAP ever refers survivors to attorneys in exchange for money, saying that the organization "has never and will never enter into any 'kickback schemes.'" Kruger's statement acknowledged that SNAP solicits and accepts donations from "anyone who believes in our cause," including attorneys who have filed lawsuits against priests and particular dioceses.

While tax filings with the IRS showed Blaine and Clohessy were paid $86,320 each in 2014, the latest year records are available, Casteix told CNS she would like to see the organization "move into professional leadership."

"I believe that SNAP's next phase can be much more inclusive of survivors ... and have professional leadership to reach out to a broader range of survivors," she said.

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Follow Sadowski on Twitter: @DennisSadowski.

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Vatican City, Feb 6, 2017 / 10:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While the Pope has in the past been depicted as a superhero or peace advocate, this weekend set a much different tone as Rome woke up Saturday to see the walls of the city center plastered with some 200 anti-Pope Francis posters.

However, after hearing about the posters, the Pope himself was reportedly unfazed, and didn’t make a big deal out of the incident.

According to Italian news agency ANSA, Pope Francis received the news of the posters with “serenity and detachment.”

Depicting a dour Pope Francis, the posters read: “Ah Francis, you’ve taken over congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals…but where’s your mercy?”

After a short time, many of the posters were covered with signs reading “abusive posting.” The majority of the posters had been taken down by Sunday morning, and as of Monday nary a one was to be seen.

The brief phrase included on the posters was written in “Romanaccio,” or the Roman dialect, and indicates the culprit is someone who comes from more conservative sectors of the Church, many of whom have been in sharp disagreement with the Pope regarding his decisions and ongoing reform of the Curia.

By saying the Pope had “decapitated the Order of Malta,” the author was making a clear reference to the Pope’s recent request for the Order’s former Grand Master, Matthew Festing, to resign while ousted Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager be reinstated.

The reference to taking over congregations and removing priests is likely a reference to recent allegations that Francis had fired three priests from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith with no notice or reason.

On ignoring cardinals, the point was a clear reference to a letter written to Pope Francis in September, asking for clarification on five points – called “dubia” – in Amoris Laetitia. The letter was subsequently published in November, after the Pope did not respond.

The signatories of the letter were American Cardinal Raymond Burke, Patron of the Order of Malta, as well as German Cardinals Walter Brandmüller and Joachim Meisner and Italian Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, all of whom are widely considered to sit on the right of the Church.

The reference to the Franciscans of the Immaculate referred to the fact that Francis made some changes to the order early on in his pontificate, restricting their use of the Latin Mass used prior to the Second Vatican Council.

However, while the Pope’s lack of concern over the posters might seem surprising to some, he said in an interview with Italian paper Avvenire in November that he doesn’t “lose sleep” over his critics, and has said on several previous occasions that resistance is a normal part of any reform.

In a lengthy speech to members of the Roman Curia Dec. 22, the Pope outlined three different types of resistance, saying the phenomenon is “normal (and) even healthy.”

He spoke of “open resistance,” which often arises “from good will and sincere dialogue,” but noted that there is also a type of “hidden resistance” that comes from “fearful or petrified hearts content with the empty rhetoric of a complacent spiritual reform.”

These are the people “who verbally say they are ready for change, but want everything to stay as it was before,” he said.

However, the Pope also highlighted a third type of resistance, which he said is a “malicious resistance, which often sprouts in misguided minds and appears when the devil inspires bad intentions.”

This type of resistance, he said, frequently “hides behind words of self-justification and often accusation; it takes refuge in traditions, appearances, formalities, in the familiar, or else in a desire to make everything personal, failing to distinguish between the act, the actor and the action.”

An absence of a reaction “is the sign of death,” he said, and because of this “good resistances – and even those not as good – are necessary and merit being listened to, welcomed and encouraged to express themselves.”

 

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