Victim Being Silenced by Church and School Officials

SNAP
June 2, 2014

http://www.snapnetwork.org/nj_victim_being_silenced_by_church_and_school_officials

New Jersey Catholic officials and Delbarton school officials are trying to protect their reputations by silencing a credible child sex abuse victim.

Shame on them.

To insist on secrecy at this point is re-victimizing this already wounded victim. And it's designed to deter other victims of child molesting clerics from speaking up.

Catholic and Delbarton officials want to pay child sex crime victims to shut up and go away, refusing to admit that church-imposed secrecy is incredibly hurtful to those victims.

Dozens and dozens of clergy sex abuse victims have signed these callous gag orders only to realize later they were further betrayed and manipulated. We know of no case in which one of them was penalized for speaking out.

These gag orders endanger kids, hurt victims and protect wrongdoers. Catholic officials should stop insisting on them and should, for the safety of kids, release all victims who have signed them.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 25 years and have more than 15,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)