HOUSTON (TX)
KPRC TV
January 24, 2019
By Sophia Beausoleil
A roundtable discussion just started in Montrose about the sexual abuse scandal swirling around the Catholic Church.
The discussion comes exactly one week before the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston is expected to release a list of priests accused of sexual abuse.
A victims’ advocacy group is hosting the discussion.
The leader of the group, Michael Norris, said members question if the archdiocese will be fully transparent. They also want to know what church officials’ definition of credibility is.
“What’s credible? We’ll talk about that tonight. What defines credibility? Because we don’t know what defines credibility for the Catholic Church. I know what credibility means to me. They haven’t shared with us what their rules are about it being credible,” Norris said.
Authorities arrested Rev. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez last September after investigators said a man and woman accused him of abuse when he was at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe in the late 1990s to early 2000s.
Later, authorities executed a search at the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in connection with the case.
After the sexual abuse accusations against La Rosa-Lopez and other priests started to come to light, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston announced it was compiling a list and would make it public.
“Also the fact that they talk about being transparent, we don’t know … who is the investigator looking at all of these files? Who is that individual? What files were given to them?” Norris said.
On Thursday afternoon, KPRC2 spoke with Norris, who is the leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.
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