BAKERSFIELD (CA)
Bakersfield Californian
May 11, 2019
By Stacey Shepard
In front of TV cameras and reporters, they said five people have called or emailed them in the past week claiming sex abuse by Monsignor Craig Harrison, a well-known and highly regarded Bakersfield priest. They castigated the bishop for his handling of the situation and passed out a list of nearly two dozen clergy the group claimed had been accused of sex abuse and had some past or present affiliation with the diocese.
This was, for many, an introduction to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, as the group is known. While the group has been around 30 years and has nine chapters in California, none exist between Los Angeles and Sacramento.
The group’s sudden arrival on the scene in the wake of allegations against Harrison has come with the organization’s trademark brand of in-your-face, watchdog activism.
According to its website, the organization is considered a loose network of volunteers who provide peer support to victims of clergy and other institutional abuse, share their stories and empower others to “confront the truth.” The site says the group also engages in advocacy for laws to protect children from abuse, and “exposes predators.”
SNAP got its start in 1989 by founder Barbara Blaine, who had recently gone public with her story of abuse as a teen by a priest in Toledo, Ohio. She put an ad in the National Catholic Reporter looking for other victims of clergy sex abuse to start a support group, according to her obituary in the New York Times. Today, the organization is a nonprofit with chapters throughout the country and around the world.
“We’re not an anti-Catholic organization. We’re not anti-priest. All we are is anti-child molester,” said Joey Piscitelli, a SNAP volunteer leader in Northern California who was at the diocese in Fresno last week.
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