MIAMI (FL)
Miami Herald
BY LISA ARTHUR
larthur@MiamiHerald.com
A group for survivors of assaults by priests urged the Archdiocese of Miami on Thursday to stop blaming a young man for his alleged rape by the Rev. Neil Doherty -- a crime the man claims happened when he was a child.
Six members of the group tried to hand-deliver a letter to Archbishop John Favalora blasting the archdiocese's legal response to a civil lawsuit filed by the young man that suggested one possible defense could be that the alleged victim's ''own negligence'' caused the abuse.
The protesters were turned away by security guards who monitored closed gates around the archdiocese's headquarters on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami Shores.
''I'm a Catholic, too, so why am I being shut out,'' Ann Brentwood, a regional director of SNAP -- the national Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, yelled to the guard, who replied she wasn't authorized to take a letter or to let the protesters in.