TOLEDO (OH)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013
Statement by Gail Howard of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 203 644 0387, Pennyq99@aol.com )
We are members of two organizations: a support group called the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and a reform group called Voice of the Faithful (VOTF)
We are here to challenge Hartford’s new Catholic Archbishop Leonard Blair to
1) explain his actions during the investigation of a priest who murdered a nun,
2) use his influence to try and get the priest defrocked, and
3) post on the archdiocesan website the names, photos and whereabouts of current and former Hartford area priests, nuns, seminarians and other child molesting clerics.
First, let’s be clear: neither Blair nor his staff have been formally charged with wrongdoing in the case of Fr. Gerald Robinson, who was convicted of brutally murdering Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. But there remain a number of troubling unresolved questions about how Blair and his top aides behaved before and during that investigation.
Initially Bishop Blair’s staff provided police with three pages of documents about Fr. Gerald Robinson, who had long been a suspect in the 1980 slaying of Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl. Believing church officials were withholding records, Toledo police twice executed “no knock” search warrants on Blair’s diocesan offices. They found scores and scores of more documents, some of which implicated Fr. Robinson.
Blair’s lawyers (and the prosecutors) went to court to block the release of what was found. Church officials won. To date, those files have never been released.
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