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	Nelson: Protecting Institution Put Ahead of Victims By Robert Nelson The World-Herald November 11, 2011 http://www.omaha.com/article/20111111/NEWS01/711119927/-1 Over the past decade or so, leaders of the support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests have debated changing the group's name. "We're now offering aid to abuse victims coming out of situations far beyond just the Catholic Church," said David Clohessy, who has been the director of SNAP since 2002, a year some would say was the height of the priest sex-abuse scandal in this country. Protestant churches. Synagogues. Mosques. Buddhist temples. Youth-based organizations. Schools. Legendary sports programs. Respected universities. "We have not received any calls from the victims in the Penn State case," Clohessy said from his St. Louis office Tuesday. "I have no idea if we will, but we are here if we're needed. "What I know is that we have worked with victims in very similar situations and are always willing to do so," he said. I met Clohessy soon after he became the group's director while I was investigating a rash of abuse allegations in the Phoenix Diocese. Sadly, we had reason to talk several times during my years working there. He came to mind as I read the stunningly long timeline of abuse detailed in court files in the case of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The actions Sandusky is accused of look to be paralleled with years of half-measures, failures to report to proper authorities, minimization of outrageous behavior and, if the allegations against administrators are true, outright cover-up of crimes. As in so many similar scandals, it seems clear that concern for an institution allowed people to stand silent as a predator shattered the lives of more children. "All the hallmarks of all those church cases in Boston or Los Angeles or there in Tucson and Phoenix are here, aren't they?" Clohessy said. "Over time you start to figure out there's a pretty clear recipe for disaster. All the ingredients would appear to be there in State College." Let Clohessy count the ways, in a diocese or a university: Big institution, he began. Popular. Prestigious. Powerful. Insular. Male-dominated along the critical chain of command. "A sense that there is a very big image that must be protected from some sort of outsider," he said. "You always see this idea in those sorts of worlds that something like this is an internal matter, that it can be taken care of internally," he said. "I've read all the court documents that were released, too. This is a particularly amazing case. How could there not be someone along the way that didn't do their basic moral and civic duty to call 911?" He answered his own question, speaking from his years of watching abuse scandals like the one at Penn State emerge and develop. "You'll see top administrators who are afraid for their jobs and afraid of dealing with a public mess and potential civil liabilities issues, and you see them lean completely on the easiest of the options laid out for them by their attorneys," he said. "They also usually have very good attorneys." Victim and witness complaints get minimized. In so many past cases in which institution officials have worked harder to protect reputations than to investigate such a pattern of behavior, he said, "you get the victims and witnesses suffering all sorts of pressure to shut up and go away." While I have nothing but respect for the work that David Clohessy and his group have done for victims of sexual abuse, I do still believe that in some cases he can be too quick to believe certain allegations. Amid several allegations backed with strong evidence against Phoenix-area priests in the early 2000s, for example, there were also what I believed were vague, inconsistent allegations from one accuser who arguably had an ax to grind. In another case, seemingly fantastical charges of impropriety were made against a priest by a man supposedly recovering repressed memories during treatment amid a long history of mental illness. I had my opinion on those allegations. He had his. But "our opinion doesn't matter," he said. Clohessy gives simple advice to anyone who experiences, witnesses or who is told about a case of sexual abuse. It's a course of action laid out in the host of reporting laws now in place that groups like SNAP and sex-abuse counselors and investigators helped formulate: "Whoever you are, in whatever position — calling anonymously or not — you get the outside authority of law enforcement involved," he said. "They're the experts. They can investigate impartially." Clohessy's life has not quieted down since the mid-2000s, when churches and other organizations began putting in place stronger procedures for reporting and investigating abuses. While many of those programs are working well, some aren't. Some institutional officials, he said, even seem to be "back-pedaling from the commitments they made during the height of the scandals that impacted them." "It's still always easier in this world to do nothing," Clohessy said. "That tendency must always be fought. The famous Martin Luther King Jr. quote always comes to mind: 'No lie can live forever.' " Contact the writer: 402-444-1129, robert.nelson@owh.com
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