ILLINOIS
Chicago Sun-Times
Andy Grimm
@agrimm34 | email
A Chicago-based advocacy group that has led a national crusade to expose sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is being sued by a former executive who claims the not-for-profit colluded with lawyers who sued the church in exchange for “kickbacks” on the multimillion-dollar settlements they won.
The onetime employee, Gretchen Hammond, worked as a staff fundraiser for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. She claims the group referred clergy-abuse victims to lawyers, who, in turn, sued the church. SNAP collaborated with those attorneys, getting advance copies of lawsuits and hosting press conferences, leveraging the publicity for fundraising efforts, the lawsuit states.
Hammond was fired from SNAP after she probed the organization’s fundraising, the lawsuit alleges.
“In reality, SNAP is a commercial operation motivated by its directors’ and officers’ personal and ideological animus against the Catholic Church,” the lawsuit states. “SNAP’s commercial operation is premised on farming out abuse survivors as clients for attorneys, who then file lawsuits on behalf of the survivors and collect settlement checks from the Catholic Church.”
SNAP President Barbara Blaine issued a brief statement Wednesday denying the allegations in the lawsuit, filed this week in Cook County Circuit Court.
“The allegations are not true. This will be proven in court,” Blaine said. “SNAP leaders are now, and always have been, devoted to following the SNAP mission: To help victims heal and to prevent further sexual abuse.”
Hammond copied files from the group during her stint as head of fundraising for the group from 2011 to 2013.
In an interview Wednesday at the office of her lawyer, Bruce Howard, Hammond said that SNAP was aware that its connections to lawyers who had sued the church was a frequent line of attack from critics of the organization — and that she was barred from so much as using the word “lawyer” in office emails or fundraising records.
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