ALASKA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Friday, March 4, 2016
Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003 cell, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)
An Alaska bishop is posturing on children’s safety instead of preserving children’s safety We urge him to stop making promises and start making progress toward exposing and punishing Catholic clerics who commit and conceal child sex crimes.
http://www.usccb.org/news/2016/16-026.cfm
Juneau Bishop Edward Burns claims it’s “shocking to hear of the (Altoona) grand jury report about more than 50 priests assaulting hundreds of kids in central Pennsylvania. That’s baloney.
More than two dozen similar reports and governmental inquiries across the globe (at least eight here in the US) have documented the very same patterns: across continents and decades: many priests abusing many kids, many church supervisors and colleagues ignoring and concealing those crimes, many priests eventually getting exposed as predators through civil suits and criminal probes, and many bishops promising to “do better” but refusing to do anything more than promulgate more meaningless and rarely enforced internal church policies.
If Burns has paid any attention to this crisis, he can’t be “shocked” by what has happened and is happening in Altoona. If he’s “shocked” by Altoona, let’s see him act to remedy it. He’s the head of the US bishops sex abuse committee. He has an enormous bully pulpit. He can use it to exhort church staff to act responsibly. Instead, he postures.
And he controls his own diocese. But he’s done nothing more than the bare minimum that’s required of him regarding abuse.
About 30 US bishops have posted predators’ names on their website. Burns refuses to do so.
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