PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Melissa Dribben
Inquirer Staff Writer
Wednesday morning, on the 10th floor of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, an impassive man in a pin-striped suit stood in the center of the stuffy room crowded with reporters, prosecutors and TV cameras.
For an hour, while the findings of a grand jury report on decades of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia were presented, people in the crowd wept and hugged and muttered things like "incredible" and "sickening" under their breath.
But John Salveson, a local spokesman for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy, the activist group known as SNAP, showed little emotion.
When District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham spoke of the "impossibility" of prosecuting priests, even when their crimes were well-documented, Salveson cradled his chin in his hand. When she described a church hierarchy more concerned with "blaming the messenger" than protecting children, he stroked his blond mustache and shook his head. Only when she went into chilling detail about a boy who was raped throughout his adolescence by a trusted priest did Salveson's eyes redden.