Newly Disclosed Predator Names Posted

By David Clohessy
SNAP
June 7, 2012

http://www.snapnetwork.org/newly_disclosed_predator_names_posted

[the list - Diocese of Rochester]

We are grateful every time the public is made more aware of a potentially dangerous predator.

As best we can tell, only 3 of these are newly disclosed names. All the rest have been posted, many for years, on a website called BishopAccountability.org

For the sake of public safety, we hope Bishop Clark will go further and release the whereabouts and photos of these potentially dangerous priests and ex-priests (as the Philadelphia archdiocese has done.)

Also missing from this list: names of Rochester priests removed before 2002. In 2004 in an internal church report, Clark said 18 had been removed since 1950. Why not name them? At least one or two of them are likely still alive and potentially dangerous.

It is also important to realize that many of the 18 removed priests cited in the John Jay report may be named in this list. But not all.

A handful of bishops have taken this step when lawmakers are weighing statute of limitations reform. Feeling that pressure (and fearing the embarrassing disclosures about corruption in the hierarchy that civil litigation can bring), bishops often take a step like this so they can claim "See, there's no need for legislative reform - we're handling this crisis."

We hope that's not what's happening here.