NEWS STORY: An Uneasy Celebrity for Victims of Church Scandal

c. 2003 Religion News Service (UNDATED) A year ago, Barbara Blaine and David Clohessy would have been unlikely entrants to the ranks of pop celebrity. As children, they were sexually abused by priests _ hardly a mediagenic role, or even an easy topic of conversation. While they defiantly called themselves “survivors” rather than “victims,” they […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A year ago, Barbara Blaine and David Clohessy would have been unlikely entrants to the ranks of pop celebrity.

As children, they were sexually abused by priests _ hardly a mediagenic role, or even an easy topic of conversation. While they defiantly called themselves “survivors” rather than “victims,” they were essentially voices in the wilderness for much of the past decade.


During those years, Blaine and Clohessy, the founder and top spokesman, respectively, of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, toiled to highlight the issue of abusive priests and to press the Roman Catholic hierarchy to stop what they said was a pattern of covering up for the molesters.

Then came the whirlwind that started a year ago on Jan. 6 with the publication of the first investigative Boston Globe article that detailed the longtime predations of a former priest, John Geoghan, and the efforts of church leaders to protect him.

The clergy abuse scandal erupted into the greatest crisis in the history of the nation’s largest denomination, and it wound up bringing down one of the nation’s most powerful Catholic churchmen, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston.

In a sign of how profoundly the issue of child sexual abuse permeated the national culture, Ms. magazine named Barbara Blaine to its 2002 Women of the Year list, while David Clohessy was named one of People magazine’s 25 Most Intriguing People, along with the likes of George Clooney.

The irony of his placement on a list dominated by glam celebs did not escape Clohessy, whose wry humor has been a saving grace for him amid so much pain and turmoil. “What’s really upsetting about it is that Jennifer Lopez is in there with her midriff showing, but they didn’t even ask me,” Clohessy deadpanned.

But in separate interviews, both Clohessy and Blaine said they saw the honors as a welcome, if surprising, recognition of their cause. “They needed and wanted to put a human face on this issue because it has been so high-profile,” Clohessy said. “That’s what it was about, obviously, more than me as an individual. Though my wife tells me I’m very intriguing.”

Blaine was also nonplused by her inclusion in a group of 13 women that includes Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the most powerful woman in Congress; Nia Vardalos of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” fame; and whistleblowers Sherron Watkins (Enron), Coleen Rowley (FBI) and Cynthia Cooper (WorldCom).


“I wasn’t sure I fit into their category,” said Blaine, who is an attorney and public guardian for abused children in Chicago. “I was just thrilled to be included.”

The honors were welcome, too, as lighter moments in a stunning year that, for all of its achievements on behalf of abused children, remains extraordinarily painful for those who have endured sexual abuse and witnessed others coming to terms with the same anguish.

“People say, `Gosh, you must feel some sense of vindication, some sense of satisfaction even,”’ said Clohessy, whose empathy and tears can well up as quickly as his sense of humor. “Maybe we will at some point. But I tell you, I don’t feel that. I am just struck by, and overwhelmed by, all of the pain.

“My head tells me yes, the past year has been good,” he said. “But emotionally I feel spent. I feel worn out. I feel very sad.”

Both say there is little time to rest, despite a tally of the year’s events reading like a string of victories for SNAP.

(OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

At the bishops’ national meeting in June in Dallas, which was devoted to the single topic of the scandal, Clohessy and several other victims addressed the assembled hierarchy in a public forum that was unprecedented. For a decade, the bishops had refused to even meet with any SNAP leaders privately. Now the bishops were brought up short by Clohessy and the other victims in emotionally charged speeches that dominated the news coverage.


Also at that meeting, Barbara Blaine led a victims delegation in a private meeting with the top leaders of the bishops’ conference. Her story brought some of the prelates to tears. The bishops and victims held a joint, impromptu news conference.

The bishops left Dallas after passing a national policy that, despite later Vatican revisions, eventually became binding on the bishops. In all, more than 325 priests (and several bishops) were removed from ministry after past allegations of abuse surfaced.

(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)

Moreover, membership in SNAP _ always the largest and most prominent victims advocacy group _ jumped from 2,200 to more than 4,500. That figure includes only victims of abuse and parents of victims who committed suicide.

This year, Clohessy was able to leave his job in education to work full time for SNAP, the first salaried employee the all-volunteer organization has ever had. And Blaine and Clohessy and other SNAP leaders were ubiquitous on television and in magazines and newspapers.

“We have gone from a situation where no one would return our calls to a situation where we can’t return all of our calls,” said Clohessy, who lives in St. Louis.

Blaine said she and others in SNAP kept waiting for the furor to die down, replicating the short attention span of scandals in years past. “Every time there would be an event before, there would be a flurry of action, then it would die down and we would go back to our lives,” Blaine said. “This year we kept waiting for everything to calm down. But it never did.”


The work for Blaine and Clohessy goes on, perhaps more intensely than before.

SNAP is primarily a support group to help victims of clergy abuse heal, and with many more victims having come forward, the organization wants to attend to their needs.

But Clohessy and Blaine both say they also need to guard against complacency. SNAP is not happy with the policy against abusive priests that the bishops passed, saying it goes too easy on them, contains too many loopholes and cannot be effectively monitored.

Most of all, after all these years, they are not ready to trust the bishops.

“What is sad is that we know a lot hasn’t been uncovered,” Blaine said. “We see Cardinal Law as just a symptom of the larger problem. His stepping down is a step in the right direction, but the problem is so systemic and so widespread that one cardinal stepping down does not solve the problem.”

Clohessy agreed.

“We always want to desperately believe that it is going to magically get better in one fell swoop, and it just doesn’t,” he said. “Over time, maybe so. We will just continue to do what we have always done, which is to provide a safe place for victims to heal.”

DEA END GIBSON

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