PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Wednesday, March 2, 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)
For the safety of kids and the healing of victims, we call on all Pennsylvania bishops to quickly and thoroughly share the names of Altoona predator priests cited in the new grand jury report.
No priest stays in his home diocese forever. Virtually all priests cross diocesan boundaries often and help at churches where their clerical colleagues are sick or on vacation, when seminarians are ordained, when a bishop is installed and for dozens of other reasons.
So it’s likely that kids were abused or are at risk in dioceses near Altoona. And it’s callous and irresponsible for Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer or Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik or Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico to assume that none of the 50+ wrongdoers identified by the grand jury are not now in or has not ever hurt anyone in his diocese.
A cursory look at the new grand jury report confirms this: Fr. William A. Rosensteel abused a kid on a trip to Pittsburgh. Fr. William Crouse sodomized a boy in New Jersey. Fr. Mario Fabbri raped youngsters on trips to New York, Quebec and Montreal. Fr. David Arsenault assaulted a teenager in Washington DC. Fr. Francis McCaa was quietly sent to work in West Virginia. Fr. Robert J. Kelly was quietly transferred to work in Charleston, South Carolina. We suspect most Altoona predators also molested outside of Altoona.
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