PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Thursday, March 10, 2016
Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home,davidgclohessy@gmail.com)
A once high-ranking Altoona priest is publicly blasting jurors and law enforcement personnel. His boss, Altoona’s bishop, should demote or at least discipline him. And the bishop should order all church employees to resist the temptation to blame others for wrongdoing by church staff.
Msgr. Michael Servinsky told a newspaper that “the grand jury did quite a hatchet job on Bishop Joseph (Adamec) – they did him in.”
How bizarre. Msgr. Servinsky pled the fifth before the grand jury. Yet now, he publicly attacks the impartial citizens who did their civic duty by sitting for grand jury duty and the unbiased law enforcement staff who spent two years investigating the reckless, callous and deceitful Altoona Catholic officials.
(Msgr. Servinsky also implied that locking up child molesters doesn’t really help and that police and judges – not church officials – took the initiative to hid clergy child sex crimes: “ I know situations where police and judges would collar him and say: ‘Get that guy out of here and we will not prosecute.’” He also made a sweeping and certainly false generalization “Most of the victims who came to us were not interested in taking it to law enforcement. They didn’t want to testify.”)
Shame on Msgr. Servinsky. And shame on Bishop Mark Bartchak for tolerating this priest’s mean-spirited and wrong-headed and self-serving remarks.
Msgr. Servinsky isn’t just any priest. For years, he worked in the Altoona diocesan headquarters as vicar general, a prominent and powerful position directly under the bishop.
It’s bad enough that Catholic officials in Altoona and elsewhere sometimes attack victims, their supporters and their attorneys. It’s distressing that they sometimes attack journalists, whistleblowers and witnesses. We’ve long grown accustomed to such inappropriate attacks from men who claim to be “shepherds.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.