MISSOURI
News Tribune
By Bob Watson
Friday, September 4, 2015
David Clohessy didn’t get anywhere near what he asked for, but he has settled his long-running abuse complaint with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City.
In a news release Thursday, Clohessy said he received $40,000 and had to promise never to sue the diocese again. He had asked for $200,000.
In a separate news release, the diocese said Bishop John Gaydos “wrote Mr. Clohessy to extend to him an apology for the abuse that he reported,” and the diocese confirmed it paid an undisclosed amount to Clohessy “to help him with his needs for healing.” Clohessy, who now lives in St. Louis, is the national director of SNAP — the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — and has said often he was abused in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when he was 12 to 16 years old, by Father John Whiteley at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Moberly.
He said he wrote then-Bishop Michael McAuliffe twice but received “very cold, terse and unhelpful replies.”
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