Excerpt:
Pope Benedict resigns: sex abuse survivors hope move eases prosecution
Victims and their advocates – who hold pontiff responsible for covering up abuse – push forward with international legal cases
By Karen McVeigh in New York, Monday, February 11, 2013
Before he became the pope, Cardinal Ratzinger headed the organisation responsible for dealing with abuse cases. Photograph: Paul White/AP
Victims of the child sex abuse crisis that has engulfed the Catholic church during Pope Benedict’s tenure welcomed his unexpected resignation on Monday, amid speculation over what prompted his departure.
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap), an organisation of 12,000 members worldwide, claim Benedict is personally responsible for widespread abuse within the church because he chose to protect its reputation over the safety of children. US lawyers who are currently suing the pontiff and other high-ranking Holy See officials for systematically concealing sexual crimes around the world, said his resignation may lead to more international prosecutions.
David Clohessy, executive director of Snap, condemned the pope’s “terrible record” on child sex abuse and said he hoped he would “finally show some courageous leadership on the abuse crisis” in his remaining days.
Excerpt from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/11/pope-resigns-sex-abuse-survivors
Perhaps, when invoking the jurisdiction of American courts which are governed not by ill-informed mob rule but by constitutional provisions requiring (not merely suggesting) due process of law, Mr. Clohessy and SNAP should understand that he and his group must submit to the rules of discovery, be deposed upon demand by opposing counsel, answer interrogatories and produce documents on demand instead of erecting his own wall of silence claiming a non-existent "privilege" to protect the "confidentiality" of those he claims to be acting for. "Take my word for it because I and they are 'victims'" won't cut it.
The Catholic League for Civil Rights has published a response by Bill Donahue, its leader, in which he points out that SNAP and Clohessy are chock full of ulterior motives, that Clohessy began his career, such as it is, with none other than the uberleftist "community organizing" group ACORN, that he has a brother Kevin Clohessy who has been a child-abusing priest and that, like so many SNAP claimants, Clohessy has experienced "recovered memory" (a quite discredited phenomenon in courts of law) in about 1988 when he suddenly "remembered" that he had been sexually abused by some priest (or some imagined priest or whomever) 25 years earlier.
No one died and left Clohessy to sit in judgment on popes or anyone else. Clohessy should stifle himself, among other things.