ILLINOIS
National Catholic Reporter
Dennis Coday | Jan. 18, 2017
A former employee of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is suing the advocacy group, claiming she was fired after she learned that SNAP’s principal officers collude with attorneys representing sex abuse survivors and that SNAP accepts financial kickbacks for referring abuse victims to attorneys.
The charges by Gretchen Rachel Hammond were made in papers filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, yesterday, Jan. 17. Hammond worked as a director of development, raising funds for SNAP from the summer 2011 until February 2013 when she was fired.
The filings say Hammond was fired after she “learned … [that] SNAP does not focus on protecting or helping survivors — it exploits them. SNAP routinely accepts financial kickbacks from attorneys in the form of ‘donations.’ In exchange for the kickbacks, SNAP refers survivors as potential clients to attorneys, who then file lawsuits on behalf of the survivors against the Catholic Church. These cases often settle, to the financial benefit of the attorneys and, at times, to the financial benefit of SNAP, which has received direct payments from survivors’ settlements.”
Defendants in the lawsuit are SNAP, Barbara Blaine, the founder and president of SNAP, David Clohessy, the executive director of SNAP, and Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s outreach director.
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