BOSTON (MA)
In Newsweekly
Chuck Colbert December 07, 2005
Unconvinced the Vatican's new criteria banning gay seminarians address root causes of clerical abuse, women who were abused by priests demonstrated on Thurs., Dec. 1, outside chancery offices of the Boston Archdiocese.
While taking aim at a new Vatican document released earlier last week, which says men "who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture'" are not suitable for priestly ordination, the female survivors also took issue with Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley's recent letter on homosexuality, which local media widely considered a positive outreach effort.
"Perhaps the public ¦ would like to continue to think that priests abused altar boys and somehow their daughters are safe," said Ann Hagan Webb, New England coordinator for Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. "We are here to dispel that myth," she added. "We were not safe. And homosexual orientation in our abusers had nothing to do with it."
Hagan Webb, a psychologist, who alleges her abuse by a monsignor from kindergarten through the seventh grade, took issue specifically with church officials and reports that suggest 80 percent to 90 percent of sex abuse victims were boys.