Victims Challenge Catholic Group

SNAP Australia
December 4, 2012

http://www.snapaustralia.org/SNAP_PressRelease_4December2012_Sydney.html

Victims challenge Catholic group

They want all its abuse files given to police

SNAP to Catholic officials: “Bring predators home now”

Those who “see, suspect or suffer child sex crimes” must “step forward,” it says

WHAT

Holding signs and childhood photos at a footpath news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will pass out leaflets to passersby seeking information about a controversial Catholic religious order. The fliers urge church officials to

-- turn over all information about known and suspected child molesting clerics to secular authorities,

-- post the names, photos and whereabouts of known and suspected sex offender clerics on church websites, and

-- insist that accused abusers return to Australia to face justice.

Victims are also encouraging current and former members of the order to “come clean” and contact law enforcement officials “so that wrongdoers can be prosecuted, children can be protected and crimes and cover ups can be exposed and deterred.”

WHEN

Tuesday, December 4th at 2 p.m.

WHERE

Catholic Church Offices

Polding Centre,

133 Liverpool Street,

Sydney NSW 2000

Australia

WHO

4 or 5 members of an international support group called SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priest) including an American woman who is the organisation’s president and founder

WHY

Many orders of the Catholic Church have harbored sex predators over many years. These orders include the Christian Brothers and Salesians of Don Bosco. Almost three in four clerics in Australia and New Zealand who belong to one Catholic religious order face child sex abuse allegations, according to testimony a few months ago by a respected psychologist before an inquiry launched by the parliament of Victoria. The Vatican -based order is called St John of God Brothers.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/order-implicated-in-abuse-scandal/story-fn3dxiwe-1226514803316

In a startling new story by Fairfax Media, crimes and cover ups by the Brothers have been disclosed for the first time.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/spreading-the-rot-of-child-sexual-abuse-20121201-2anl0.html

One member of the order, Brother Rodger Moloney, was arrested in Australia in 2003 (along with two fellow brothers). But the order spent years - and hundreds of thousands of dollars - fighting Moloney’s extradition to New Zealand. In 2006, however, Moloney lost that battle. Two years later , he was convicted and served a year in New Zealand jail from 2008 for abusing five boys at Marylands. He remains a Brother and is now back in St John of God's care in NSW.

Another ex-member of the order, Bernard McGrath, was convicted in NSW in 1993 for abusing a boy at the order's Kendall Grange school at Morisset on the central coast in the 1980s. But it was not until 2002 - nine years later - that the order called him in to ask him about the abuse. On the weekend he returned from Sri Lanka to Christchurch where he was arrested and granted bail.

http://www.watoday.com.au/world/missing-mcgrath-appears-in-new-zealand-court-20121203-2apqq.html

Some of the abuse, perpetrated against many kids with disabilities, took place at church-run institutions like Kendal Grange in Morisset NSW, Greensborough and Mentone in Victoria and Marylands in Christchurch NZ.

Catholic officials have paid settlements to a large number of victims who say they were molested by the brothers yet not one perpetrator had ever been referred to the police.

Five of the alleged predators harboured within the Order are deceased. An unknown number are alive and still active in the communities, many working overseas. One credibly alleged perpetrator is still celebrating mass to large congregations in an unsuspecting community.



Contact: bblaine@snapnetwork.org