Archdiocese Is Targeting Victim in Child Sex Abuse Case

By Maria Keena
KMOX
April 22, 2014

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/04/22/snap-archdiocese-is-targeting-victim-in-child-sex-abuse-case/


It’s not the first allegation against Father Joseph Jiang.

The suspended 31-year-old priest is charged with first-degree statutory sodomy, and was previously accused of having improper contact with a teenage girl and giving the family $20,000 in hush money. Those charges were dismissed in November 2013.

But the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) want to know why he was able to live unsupervised, following the first allegation of abuse.

David Clohessy tells KMOX that Archbishop Carlson is deliberately trying to discourage others from coming forward about Father Jiang’s crime by going after the latest alleged victim’s family. He says that Archbishop Carlson claims that the family reported that their son had been bullied at school, and that he only recently made his abuse disclosure.

“Catholic parishes are tightly knit,” he says. “And they’re especially tightly knit when they have a school, like Cathedral has. So, for Archbishop Carlson to disclose information that lets other parishioners know who this family is, and who this victim is—he’s still a boy—that’s just unconscionable.”

Clohessy says it’s common for victims to take a while to come forward, and by releasing that information, Archbishop Carlson essentially outed the victim and his family to the rest of their parish and, potentially, the rest of the schoolchildren.

Father Jiang was removed from the Cathedral Basilica after the first allegation.

He now lives at the Dominican Friars Center on Lafayette. Jiang is not a Friar, he is a secular priest.