KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Star
January 18, 2019
By Judy L. Thomas
A victims’ advocacy group on Friday called on the Bishop Sullivan Center to change its name, saying it honors a bishop who oversaw the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese during a period when most priest sex abuse cases occurred.
“Honoring wrongdoers makes already-suffering abuse victims suffer more, and that makes them less apt to speak up in the future, thus endangering more kids,” said David Clohessy, former director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“It also makes witnesses and whistleblowers more apt to stay silent. ‘Why stick my neck out,’ they ask themselves, ‘when even those who are clearly guilty are still held out as model clerics by the church hierarchy?’”
The Bishop Sullivan Center indicated Friday that it had no plans to take any action.
“We are not aware of any misconduct by Bishop Sullivan,” said director Tom Turner in an email to The Star. “On the contrary, we knew him as a man committed to helping people in poverty, which was why the center was named after him. Many people we help are victims of abuse, so we are sympathetic to that pain.”
Bishop John J. Sullivan was head of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph from 1977 to 1993. He died in 2001 at 80.
In an email to The Star, the diocese said that the Bishop Sullivan Center “is an independent charity in Kansas City which serves the poor.”
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