GALLUP (NM)
Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer
GALLUP — Two representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests met on Saturday for the first time with members of the Gallup Diocesan Review Board for Juvenile Sexual Abuse.
Steve M. Rabi, director of New Mexico SNAP, and Joseph Baca, director of Northern Arizona and Western New Mexico SNAP, met with the review board at the chancery office of the Gallup Diocese.
Rabi, of Albuquerque, N.M., is not a sexual abuse victim from the Diocese of Gallup. According to Rabi, he was abused in his home state of New Jersey, but he has been a New Mexico resident for many years. He retired from the Bernalillo Sheriff's Department, he said, after a career in law enforcement.
Baca, of Phoenix, Ariz., says he was sexually abused in the early 1970s in the Diocese of Gallup by the late Father Clement A. Hageman, who was then assigned to a parish in Winslow, Ariz. Baca has received a settlement from the Gallup Diocese, but he and diocese officials have declined to share with The Independent the amount or details of that settlement.
According to Rabi and Baca, review board members in attendance at Saturday's meeting included Board Chairwoman Margie Trujillo of Farmington, N.M. and members Floyd Kezele and Dr. Steve Heath of Gallup, and Father Jerry Herff of Kayenta, Ariz.