SNAP's founder and president Barbara Blaine
According to a tip received by TheMediaReport.com, Barbara Blaine, the founder and president of the anti-Catholic group SNAP, has admitted that she wrote a letter on behalf of a Louisiana psychologist, Dr. Steve Taylor, who was arrested and jailed on charges of possessing over 100 images of kiddie porn.
In 2009, when the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners was considering revoking the license of Dr. Taylor following his arrest for child pornography, Blaine wrote a letter to the board and explained that Taylor had founded a local chapter of SNAP and had done extensive work for the group. She then begged that the board "refrain from taking any action on this case until Dr. Taylor's guilt or innocence is determined in a court of law."
Taylor later pleaded guilty to the kiddie porn charges and was sentenced to prison for his crimes.
While Bruce Nolan at the Times-Picayune (Louisiana) newspaper first reported that Blaine had sent a letter to the state board on behalf of Taylor, SNAP has steadfastly refused to publicly acknowledge its existence. However, thanks to a tip to this site, the letter and Blaine's subsequent defense of the letter are finally public.
According to our tip, Blaine made the admission about her letter on behalf of Taylor in a lengthy internal 2012 memo issued by her and National Director David Clohessy to concerned leaders of SNAP's local chapters across the country who were troubled by the fact their leader had written a letter in support of a man arrested for a kiddie porn crime. In the memo, Blaine defended her decision to write the letter and her refusal to publicly acknowledge writing it.
Barbara Blaine's iron fist
A number of regional leaders at SNAP were apparently angry that the leader of a sex abuse victims group had written a letter on behalf of a person who had been arrested with sexually explicit pictures of children on his computer.
Some SNAP leaders had begun to ask that Blaine "apologize" or "explain" her decision to write the letter, with some people actually demanding that she resign over it.
And shockingly, according to our tip, after a SNAP leader wrote a measured and heartfelt email requesting that Blaine publicly apologize for writing her letter, Blaine promptly expelled the leader.
The rank hypocrisy
Busted for kiddie porn:
Dr. Steve Taylor
"Barbara was told the letter would remain private," the memo explains. "Obviously, for reasons we don't know, that didn't happen."
In other words, Blaine wrote a letter on behalf of a guy arrested with a large cache of kiddie porn expecting that no one would find out about it.
Yet ever since its inception, SNAP has repeatedly blasted Catholic officials for their alleged "secrecy" and "concealment" in their handling of cases decades ago involving alleged abuse by priests.
The hypocrisy could not be more clear: Secrecy for SNAP, but full transparency for the Catholic Church.
SNAP's cover-up – exposed
Astonishingly, Blaine's and Clohessy's memo lays out a plan to keep any knowledge of Blaine's shocking letter on behalf of Taylor out of the public realm.
Blaine and Clohessy issued a recommendation to SNAP chapter leaders and members about what they should do if they receive inquiries about Blaine's letter, and the pair's recommendation is simple and straightforward: Say nothing. Do nothing.
"As harsh as this may sound, we'd recommend that you not respond," the memo advises.
Again, SNAP's rank hypocrisy is blinding. Just days ago, SNAP's Clohessy published a blog post in which he upbraided Church officials for their alleged "increased silence" about decades-old claims and the frequency with which some dioceses respond with "no comment" in the media.
Yet Blaine and Clohessy are here advising their members to cover up SNAP's own letter to a government authority to go easy on a consumer of kiddie porn.
A call to SNAP for honesty and transparency
In truth, Blaine's letter simply asked that the Board of Medicine to hold off on the decision over Taylor's medical license until his criminal case had been decided. In her mind, an accused friend is innocent until proven guilty and should be entitled to a presumption of innocence with respect to his professional status.
However, if SNAP had ever discovered that a Catholic bishop had recently written a similar letter on behalf of an accused priest, its response would be explosive. And mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times would no doubt be running screaming headlines about a bishop "endangering the welfare of children" by "covering up" and "defending" the crimes of an abusive priest. Media calls for the bishop to resign would be deafening.
Barbara Blaine and David Clohessy should now publicly apologize for their secret, hypocritical acts. And if they are unwilling to conduct themselves by the same standards to which they hold others, then they should both resign.
[See also: *SPECIAL REPORT* SNAP Uncovered: Shocking Facts About the Media's Favorite Church-Bashing Group]
P.S. I did have a "successful" time in the military. I was at Army headquaters at Ft. Amador in the Canal Zone. In my 2yrs I went from buck private to Spec.5. Not bad in 2 yrs.. I must be a real jerk.
I know now no matter what I say, I'll be discounted here by Frick and Frack, Donahue and George. So i'll "rant" on with my truth. And they can wrap you, the readership, in the warm and comforting blanket of their lies.
And the beat goes on.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/white-privilege-conferences
http://www.beforeitsnews.com
Could it be that priests are a subgoup of a bigger problem?
See why we should be saving catholic schools? The focus is character.
Please–no more hurtful comments. Thank you
P.S. Churchill was an alcholic bum, The man who gave the British; the Australians and New Zealanders, their bloodbath at Gallipoli in WWI ( 25,000 allied dead). The jerk who broke coal miners strikes for decent wages. Americans love Churchill with out knowing him. The British working class kicked his butt to the curb the minute the war ended. They knew Winnie all too well. Nice speeches during the war though. But when it comes to dead humans speeches are meaningless.
Imagine if you will, there were no SNAP no VOTF. Those organizations disappear. What would be left?……..Anybody?
Don't you think that victims abandoned by the disappearence of the "support" of said groups, would reform.? Create other groups? Why hasn't that happened? why will it never happen?
Because we victims have never met yet. There is no substructure of victims ready to take charge of our own movement. SNAP and VOTF have never needed victims to do what they do. Victims are the antithisis of what SNAP and VOTF real missions are.
Why don't you see all that stampede as Cardinal George calls it. Where's the underpinings to this movement? Where is the scafold of victims supporting the "brilliant" work SNAP has done for victims. The sub structure where is it? All you see are Barbra and David and Barbra that's it. If you see more in the tiny demo's they have. The majority of those people are supporters. If you don't see any mass movement of victims; there is none. Pure and simple.
Ah well then. If a two-year hitch is definable as a “career” then what might we imagine is definable as “abuse”? And in the Canal Zone. And at the “headquaters” – about which it might also more accurately be described not as an “Army” but as a Brigade headquarters, for reasons of accuracy and clarity that anyone familiar with military terminology would recognize immediately). As for the claimed promotions, I’m going to classify the credibility of that claim right up there with all the rest of the claims on record.
(Yet I confess myself modestly and pleasantly surprised. I had been expecting references to General Custer and sage warnings-unheeded on a certain June morning.)
And once again, the larger point of interest here is the rather remarkable elasticity with definitions and characterizations and truth as we see in this military-career bit. And are we to presume that these bad habits are suddenly left out in the car when it comes to claims, assertions and allegations?
Also we see again the self-serving framing: a person who has just proffered the military-career bit cawn’t think why he bothers “telling the truth of [his] experience” in the first place, especially to such unbelievers as are to be found on this site. But to a person for whom “military career” equals a single two-year enlistment, what on earth is “truth” in the first place?
And this is the major value of the whole exchange here: With persons who a) are this loose with truth and accuracy (and Mr. CEO Clohessy of course erected the whole dysfunctional dynamic into a philosophy) and who also perhaps b) have actually achieved an interior certainty that they are right, it is not hard to see how such story-telling – given for so many years such stenographic respect by the media – became a Stampede.
But it’s never too late to correct for the derangements and bring things back to an even keel. Which is a process finally starting to pick up speed.
And in regard to “speeches being meaningless” – aside from the extraordinary (fill in the blank) of such an assertion, then why do we teach the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural in school? And if the fact that Churchill drank utterly discredits his rather demonstrable achievements, then where do we classify ungrounded and ranty assertions by persons far closer to home who clearly have notable difficulties with accuracy and veracity?
Propaganda!
[edited by moderator] I was at U.S. Army comand for the entire U.S. Army in the Canal Zone. and for central and south America U.S. Army USARSO. Brigade was near by but we weren't connected occupation wise. Hey we were headquarters Southern Command. And believe me I could have cared less what the place was called. I was just counting how many days left to go.
Speeches are meaningless to the dead, duh! The Dead at Gettysburg I can assure you didn't give a [edited by moderator] about what Abe said over their graves.
Cardinal George we are in a class war whether you like it or believe in it or not.
In it we are. And if you're not winning in class war, you are definetly losing. That's the nature of the beast. It shuffles on with you or without you. And It most certainly doesn't care about you.
Screw Churchill as though a discusion of him in any way relates to the subjects at hand.
As far as the vast vast majority of working class Britons goes, Churchill was a punk.
And when did you get your first cassock, Cardinal?
Gloria–
My sincerest apologies for referring to your posts as blue/melancholy/dismal.
Again, it seemed like a cheap shot–if you are having a problem with a person,
why not go talk directly with the person? I will pray for you. God Bless.
Great pick up for the media report.
Yep, that is how the history books remember Churchill, an alcoholic bum, union-busting jerk- I do believe that is yet another truth emanating from bizarro world.
Re: Pope Pius XII being "Hitlers Pope", that worn-out leftist, atheist drivel has been thoroughly discounted as the antiCatholic bias it always was. A fairly well-known Jewish figure of the 20th C summed it up this way:
"Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty."
Thank you, Albert Einstein.
Delphin,
Just several days ago a person made a similar remark about our former pope.Hopefully, time and good teaching will advance the truth. With regards to your other comment about sitting on a case for decades. I think most people who have been wronged, simply want an honest apology.
Allow me to enclose these quotations of Albert Einstein regarding the Catholic Church directly from wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein
The quote you gave, Billie, was from Time Magazine 1940. Einstein said he had spoken off handedly to a reporter prasing a few good Churchmen and he said it not in 1940 but in the early years of Hitlers rule and that is a statement Einstein himself described as greatly exagerated.
Oh what tangled webs you weave etc. LOL
This is the more accurate, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein&action=edit§ion=10
Einstein said it, he never walked it back, even in light of those astoundingly dubious "citation/sources" provided via the "reputable" Wikipedia (Antigue Roadshow; Skeptics Society – really?).
We'll also have to ignore Israel's and scores of Rabbi's and thousands of Jewish survivors testimony and public expression of gratitude to the Pope for his documented heroics.
Yeah, your "truth" erases all those facts, here, too.
But, we're off topic here, again. Isnt this all about you (isnt it always just about you?) and those bad "priesty-boys"? What in the world does Pope Pius XII have to do with your personal grievance against the church?
Nothing. Which is of the same substance of your bogus claims.
Stories like this never cease to amaze me, but they no longer surprise me. Human nature, being what it is, weighs in in just about every aspect of the sex abuse scandal, but the most suspect reaction of all is "rage and indignity" and claims of "crimes against humanity." It is simply not true that "Barbara and David" haven't committed any such crimes. False witness is a crime against the Decalogue. Clearly, they even admit to accusing falsely, and without evidence, and without ever helping to clear the names of those falsely accused. The crimes of Dr. Taylor are no surprise at all. I learned long ago to be wary of crusaders. I believe I have posted this link before, but it really helps to put a perspective on the Dr. Taylor story: http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/be-wary-of-crusaders-the-devil-sigmund-freud-knew-only-too-well/
Look in the section William Hermanns conversations and read just what the greatest mind in the 20th century thought about the corporate Church and Hitler.
I couldn't have wanted a better man or woman on my team. Save maybe Samuel Beckett.
A few more useful bits.
There is still no awareness of the distinction in military terminology that I mentioned before. USARSO was stood-up as an organizational entity sometime in the mid/late-1980s if memory serves, and not HQ’d in the Canal Zone; and the timeframe of the mid-1980s would have made for a rather elderly enlistee for the era – especially one who simultaneously a) climbed so quickly in rank and yet b) “was just counting how many days left to go”. At any rate, one is free to imagine what substantive military chops were picked up in a 2-year hitch where the service-member was counting-the-days.
The major relevant point in this whole bit is the fact that TMR has introduced something that in the Playbook was never ever supposed to have been done: upon hearing stories you were never supposed to think them through or ask questions, let alone point out where dots either didn’t connect or that the dots seemed be as expandable as Play-Dough. We see what happens when the holy-water of thought is shpritzed into the den of stories.
As for the (again) extraordinary claim that “speeches are meaningless to the dead”, it is necessary to point out that for that assertion to be true, one would have to have definitive knowledge that the dead are – not to put too fine a point on it – dead. And I would not be willing to credit any tin-foil hat assembly that claimed to be able to deliver definitive evidence of that.
Further, there is that thing about speeches being useful to the living – which appears not to have been factored into the commenter’s calculations and assessment. A rather significant omission and easily fatal to the credibility and competence of his position.
But we note again how easily poses are struck – put on like costumes in a play, really – and (let’s face it) how much Abuseniks like to hear themselves make authoritative noises and mimic authoritative and credible statements (e.g. “I can assure you” – which in this case the commenter most certainly cannot).
Also I point out that having substantially missed the relevance and point of my original Churchill reference, and having then pulled out whatever he had in his own mental shoebox of 3×5 cards about Churchill, and thus having lost sight of the ball in the process, JR now professes himself unable to see what the purpose of the Churchill discussion was all about anyway. This would not pass muster as competence in counterintelligence procedure.
I don’t know who is supposed to be a “Cardinal” in the concluding bit: Delphin? Myself? Nor is the meaning clear.
And what is the relevance of Einstein’s views on religion? Are we intended to conclude that since neither JR nor Einstein believ in any recognizable Christian God (does JR believe in Spinoza’s God – like Einstein?) then – in a simulacrum of logic – JR and Einstein are equally brilliant? But then – upon being informed of the findings in the new field of quantum-mechanics, Einstein exclaimed that he was convinced “that God does not play dice with the world”.
Come to think of it, Einstein also said that in his opinion the value in a college education was “the training of the mind to think”. Now that seems relevant indeed.
I have just come across the comment of 713PM and I have also now noticed the identity of “Cardinal George” – it’s me! Fortunately, among other lacks, the commenter lacks the authority to place me in that status and role – except in that mental shoebox of 3×5 cards I mentioned in my immediately prior comment, and that is of course his right.
The ‘we-don’t-know-your-names’ bit again; it seems a vital bit to run the play and not having it forces a focus onto the issues. Which is not, clearly, the preferred ground upon which the Abusenik likes to operate and engage.
I was referencing JR’s “military career”, and I think it’s been dealt with sufficiently.
But perhaps if one were to focus on the issues, and not thinking up epithetical names for other commenters, then perhaps one’s presentations would be more focused. But then – perhaps, in best playbook style, that’s the point of the name-making in the first place.
What might usefully be gleaned from this story about the involvement with SNAP?
JR is told not to share the specifics of his abuse-story but rather to “stay in the pain”. The ‘stay’ bit is shrewd public-relations strategy, perhaps suggested by a tort-attorney adept at manipulating self-presentation. Surely the organization wouldn’t simply want itself to be seen as a bunch of people trying to button-hole everybody to tell their particular tale of woe like a revenant from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; the group’s calculated objective is to lure people in, not frighten them off. But that was not, as best can be gleaned here, JR’s objective.
Apparently, JR’s strategy and objectives differed from SNAP’s: they were trying to build up a base, while JR is focused on telling-stories. Well, that’s a legitimate difference of strategy and objectives. I’m not moved to take a side in this dogfight, so I’ll just let it be what it is.
But the one disconnect that does leap off the page here is that SNAP’s objective was apparently trying to build an Alinsky-ite advocacy organization while JR was looking for a therapeutic audience for telling stories. Again, equally legitimate but differing (perhaps even incompatible) strategic objectives. Although it is hardly warranted to claim that the SNAP strategy is “absolutely useless to victims”. That would all depend on how the strategic objectives were intended to define and carry out the ‘help’ to the (self-claimed) victims.
As I went into at great length in reviewing that recent book about Doyle and Sipe and Anderson and the rest, I can’t see how it can honestly be claimed that those people didn’t do a great deal for the Abusenik Stampede. And in that sense one could certainly see them being put forth as “heroes” (though to my mind more in the sense that the Soviets hero-ized the Stakhanovites: heroes in a greatly dubious cause).
Apparently 12,000 dollars was nothing. That would depend on the nature and credibility of the allegations, among other factors. But I am not going into the specifics of anybody’s particular story/case here. Except to note that due to the efforts of those “heroes” who went on to write the legal playbook, the payout became a million.
But the Abuseniks don’t seem to “like [JR] very much” and actually seem to do their best to “avoid” him. Now that’s interesting indeed. And would there be any connection between that and the shortness of an otherwise “successful” “military career”? (Rhetorical question here; I really don’t want to pry.)
The immediate resort to “low self-esteem” that was “caused by the abuse”. That’s one possible chain of diagnostic causation; but surely not the only one.
Then there comes the conclusion that one is not the problem, but rather that SNAP is “treating victims” “terribly”. Is this a function of the original discrepancy in strategic objectives or needs, or is it that SNAP is indeed ‘treating victims terribly’ (however that is defined)?
SNAP’s strategic/organizational objectives would have remained the same regardless of the tactical location where they would be deployed (e.g. Los Angeles). This would reflect the tight on-message and strategic focus imparted to SNAP, I would say, by those shrewd and savvy tort-attorneys and perhaps some PR advisers as well.
(And are we really going to imagine that in all of this and during all of this the Church was controlling SNAP into attacking it to the tune of several billions in payouts?)
And nobody is asked to “elect anyone”. If my assessment of SNAP is accurate, it was a tightly-focussed organization stood-up with the help of some verrrry savvy players in order to pull off what rather clearly resembles an almost military-like operation directed at the deep-pockets and public credibility and status of the Church. And – if I may – such goal-oriented organizations do not usually seek to risk diluting their effectiveness by getting into the internal politics of elections.
(And again, it is one thing to set up and operate such an organization, and another thing to claim that since SNAP is so slyly and shrewdly and highly organized that the Church must be behind it. Without a whole lot of amazing evidence those two dots will need to be stretched like Play-Dough to make them connect.)
Again we see a report of a sustained disconnect between JR and the overall Abusenik/SNAP organization and membership. There are many possible explanations for this, only one of which is that the organization and members realized that JR had himself “sussed out” their own organization’s (and perhaps their own personal) badness.
JR finds the picketing of a former priest ‘creepy’; (a former priest who had served his time; we’ll leave the “pedophile” characterization out of it since we would need a lot more solid information to reach that diagnosis – or perhaps this is just an exaggerative turn of phrase) . Nice, but has he not mentioned in prior comments that he was not averse to the Westboro-Baptist tactic of picketing the funerals of deceased accused priests? At any rate, the (rightly characterized) “creepiness” of SNAP’s tactics fall right in with their organizational/strategic objectives, especially as the Stampede created a favorable tide of public (or at least media) opinion.
We are informed that “religion had nothing to do with the crimes committed”. It becomes difficult here to follow the bouncing-ball in the thought-process: is JR now saying that he disagrees with the linking of the (alleged) crimes committed with “religion”, or is he congratulating himself that he was the only one who would stand up and make that connection? This is a vital problem with the presentation here, since he then goes on to use this (profoundly mushy and incoherent) conceptual confusion as the basis for the inference that clearly SNAP had to be working for the Church.
And to that I would say: it is perfectly possible that SNAP’s organizational strategy was precisely not to combine a) an attack on “religion” with b) its specific victimist/Abusenik efforts. Because to do so would risk the danger of alienating far too many potential supporters or sympathizers and thus weakening the to-SNAP beneficial effects of the Stampede. And that would have served to weaken the equally ‘beneficial’ effects on the tort-attorneys’ prospects of using the Stampede in public-opinion to inveigle large out-of-court settlements from the targeted Dioceses and their Insurers.
So I would say that there are some perfectly coherent and rational possibilities for explaining what JR reports as his observations about SNAP without having to resort to the (very very very problematic) hypothesis and assertion that SNAP therefore had to be and has to be a tool of the Church.
Specifically, I would say that SNAP is and always has been tied in with the tort-attorneys, at least as early as the early 1990s when Barbara Blaine encountered then-rising Jeff Anderson at that conference in the Midwest (discussed in my comments on that book a while back).
Thus the “benefit” was not the “hierarchs’” at all, but rather the “benefit” was the tort-attorneys’ and SNAP’s.
And thus – in terms of rational and coherent and factually-grounded hypotheses – I think the Church/SNAP axis can finally be dismissed. (Although anybody is welcome to continue to embrace that hypothesis if they think it works for them. But again: the fact that it “works” for somebody doesn’t make it any more coherent or rational or accurate.)
Thus also I would say that the “demos” did indeed play a significant role in the garnering of the obscene settlement amounts that have been achieved. They helped fuel the Stampede in public opinion, which then in turn lured pandering politicians into weakening traditional American and Western law and embracing what I have called the revolutionary/victimist legal paradigm instead.
And – to repeat what I have often said recently in comments – it was those treacherous legal ‘reforms’ rooted in the revolutionary/victimist paradigm that comprised the “laws” (and so rarely “in the courtroom” but rather in out-of-court settlements) that lubricated the path of this whole Thing.
Therefore and lastly, I am taking issue primarily with the thinking (or lack of it) underneath the assertions and claims of such (self-declared) victims as have posted here. “The truth of [their] experience” – impossible to determine in the internet modality – is purely secondary and incidental. Thus I continue to explain this to people who really have given no deeper thought to any of all this, but rather have remained fixated on trying to tell their stories and expect that such a Rime of the Ancient Mariner tactic is all that is required.
And I continue to say that the Rime approach is most certainly not based on an accurate appreciation of the situation at all. I “get it” clearly; I simply don’t accept it as a sufficient or even coherent approach to the Matter. And I have here gone to great length again to explain my own thinking that grounds that conclusion. It has nothing to do with “not getting the truth” of what JR writes, but rather it has everything to do with “getting” the fundamental truth underlying of the entire Catholic Abuse Matter.
As for the inclusion of both French (raison d’etre) and Italian bits: nice but merely decorative icing on a poorly-baked cake.
Now as for the 713PM comment:
Who is the “you” to whom this comment is addressed? Is the sentence itself supposed to be a question or a statement (in another instance of what we discussed about another comment to this article, we see again the confusion/conflation of an interrogative introduction and a declarative punctuation).
But what I have already written in this comment should cover the “stampede” matter sufficiently.
Thank you, everyone.
We are closing this thread for now.
In regard to the foregoing, I’m going to try to work the bits that seem the most useful for the readership.
About the “military career”: we are now informed that when JR mentions “career” it doesn’t mean “career” in the sense of life’s-work or profession, but rather means … something else or whatever, and specifically in this case whatever JR would like it to mean. And anyway, he was only joking so clearly I have no sense of humor (and where have we heard that bit before?).
Obviously, JR’s assessment of what he finds “truthful” can no longer be of substantial concern. Although his use of “speculative” prompts the following ‘counterintelligence’ hypothesis: a bunch of people are getting together in the ‘cafeteria’ – through emails or phone calls – to help JR put something together, and thus when we do get longish and (more or less) normally-presented comments that still don’t seem to make sense, it reflects the fact that all of the input (notes taken over the phone or internet references or emails) has then to be filtered through JR’s own capabilities, resulting – as I said – in these curiously extended comments, sprinkled from time to time with the odd complex word (e.g. “speculative”) or mimicry of advanced-level diction or some sudden literary or historical reference (rarely well-deployed), and yet still – considered in toto – conceptually disjointed.
That’s just my thought – dipping into ‘counterintelligence’ type assessment. And thanks to JR for the entrée to that.
JR does seem to be heavily invested in being a “victim” rather than a “survivor” – although whatever insight he has into the difference, such that he could be impressed with it as a “PR strategy”, isn’t clear. For myself, I’d say that “survivor” – despite its truly repellent and sly filching from the milieu of the Holocaust – at least has the psychological upside of giving certain persons the possibility of a sense of constructive, positive and responsible action. Although this positive possibility is not guaranteed simply by the concept of ‘survivor’; one can ‘survive’ merely in the sense of having been in a train-wreck or plane-crash and somehow mysteriously to have come out alive where others died – ‘random’ surviving, so to speak.
The tort-attorney/SNAP feedback loop benefited some victims very well (some, to the tune of a million or much more). I completely agree that such an arrangement would have no necessary provision for (genuine) victims. That would have required spending money on therapy and clearly some players in this whole scenario were/are not interested in spending their own money on anybody else’s therapy. One wonders if perhaps Anderson and SNAP and all the other tort-attorneys – after carefully considering the experiences of their professional involvement – had quietly come to the conclusion that there weren’t really enough of the genuine article out there to worry about. Perhaps JR can take up the issue with the principals involved.
As far as Anderson’s being “not the best lawyer”, that’s another JR assessment that should be given exactly the amount of respect it deserves. Anderson’s certainly achieved what he set out to do in his career, has he not? From the purely utilitarian point of view, he’s succeeded in what he set out to do, I would say. Perhaps JR’s source for this observation had mentioned a bit of justification for that assessment – if so, it would help to take better notes so that the actual comments here might make a bit more sense.
In regard to the Doheny bequests: Presuming we are not talking about Mr. Doheny’s in-life donations to various local Catholic colleges, what bequests would those be? Carrie Estelle Doheny, his widow, did bequeath an art and rare-book collection which, by operation of the terms of her will, became ‘unrestricted’ in 1983 and the sale of which produced about 34 million dollars for the Archdiocese in the very late 1980s.
Or are we dealing here with another convenient myth being pushed at us as historical fact? Was there actually a Doheny bequest to the Archdiocese of LA for a billion dollars? Or did somebody read that his overall fortune at one time encompassed a billion dollars (in today-money or in 1920s or 1930s or 1950s money?) and then somebody heard somewhere else that he and the wife ‘left stuff’ to ‘some part of the Church’ – out of which ingredients came the conclusion that the Dohenys left a billion to the Archdiocese of LA … ? Do you factor into your claim all of the bequests and donations to non-religious institutions and public entities which would have also come from the Doheny fortune? Or just how is this billion-dollar figure arrived-at?
My thought in all of this: the billion-dollar bequest ‘fact’ came into being in much the same way the Catholic Abuse Matter itself came into being.
And what role did this billion-dollar myth play in the calculations of various types and interests whomping up their allegations and lawsuits?
As for the Economus material:
Fr. Doyle accepted an award from VOTF in 2002 and mentioned Economus respectfully. (See first link below.)
In the very early 1990s Economus’s Linkup and SNAP were both rising simultaneously. I cannot make sense of the commentary about Anderson’s using SNAP but couldn’t afford to or didn’t want to ask questions about SNAP’s (alleged here) Church-controlled affilations. As the D’Antonio book pointed out, Anderson’s early successes with suing-the-Church were bringing in numerous clients and offers on their own, especially in light of his own shrewd use of PR and a complicit media precisely as the Doyle/Mouton Report had predicted. So Anderson did not “need” SNAP as badly as all that.
Economus titled his group “The Linkup, Survivors of Clergy Abuse”; yet we have been told that this man is a paragon of JR’s, who has previously claimed that “we” are victims and somebody else gave “us” the name ‘survivors’ (in response to my observation that filching the term ‘survivor’ from Holocaust usage was not justifiable). Are we to presume that – once again – it would be insensitive to observe that today’s pose is rather substantially different from that prior pose?
Why did Economus choose to populate his Linkup board with priests and nuns?
And once again, we have a “list” … but it is “missing”. Since Economus was not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church at the time of his death, then – presuming such a list exists and is not simply an internet myth – who could/would have taken it and why? And of what use would an Economus ‘list of victims’ be at this point? Of what relevance is it to anything being discussed here?
The Linkup book “Victims No Longer” (which also prefers ‘survivor’ to ‘victim”) makes complimentary reference to SNAP.
Further, in an interview on PBS (second link below) Economus reports himself as a difficult child (his claim is that this was completely – and externally – caused by his parents’ marital problems); and that in consequence he was sent to a boy’s-ranch run by a priest; and that in the early 1990s, with the priest dead since 1975, Economus reported himself as raped by that priest; although Economus – despite the alleged rape – had then chosen to enter a Roman Catholic seminary. Eventually Economus died as a clergyman of another religious entity at the age of 46 of bone cancer.
Whether, therefore, Economus is one of JR’s (few) good guys or is instead on JR’s (ever-expanding) list of bad guys is not altogether clear here. Perhaps he is both. This might be the result – as the old military image has it – of a horse being planned by a committee and thereby turning out as a camel.
http://www.votf.org/Convention/tomdoyle.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pope/sex/economus.html
The only Ancient Mariner here is you.I never said i had a military" career" as in life long profession. If I said "career" it was tounge in cheek. though I've looked at previous posts and can't see where I said it. It's pretty obvious Cardinal George, P, here,has little if any sense of humor.I find what he writes funny in a pedantic kind of way. But truthfull as compared to speculative? Not so much.
As far as SNAP being the Church goes, It took us years to figure it out. Years.
Early on we victims saw SNAP was connected to Jeff Anderson on some level. But let's look at what that level was:
Anderson needed SNAP to get clients therefor he promoted and donated to SNAP, no problem. But he couldn't not deal with SNAP and get as many clients. So crossing SNAP or looking at SNAP too deeply was not important to him or to any other lawyer hoping to get clients. SNAP was there. Victims called SNAP and nobody else. Why? Because SNAP was pushed as reping victims and described as" heroic" On Phil Donahue and Oprah, and on Jerry Springer( before he went sleezoid)( All Chicago based shows, Cardinal George.hint hint.) Once you've been praised by Oprah you were made if you were an author or a so called "victims' support group" , excuse me "survivors' support group". We were never to be seen as victims only survivors. Interesting P.R. strategy don't you think?
Any way there was the Empire State Building of survivors groups, SNAP. The only group to be seen once Tom Econimus had died. A priest and victim who created Link Up a predessor to SNAP and whose board members consisted of nuns and priests and staunch lay Catholics. (Tom's victims' list "disappeared" with his death.)
So we victims (most of whom have left the Church) were always to be repped by active Catholics and even by priests. Odd don't you think?
Not if you look back at individual pre-year 2000 settlements. One victim described settling his case, being repped by a Church recomended Catholic lawyer. Keep the whole thing in house and quite.This is how the corporate Church had always settled this "business". in house and quite.
And Jeffy Anderson became lead survivors' lawyer because?
I have no idea.
He's not the best lawyer
. But given the number and avarice of the tort profession (according to you Cardinal George) How come we have Jeff Anderson dominating the field?
It makes no sense unles you see SNAP as the entrance to the land of clients, a holding pen for victims, who knowing nothing about lawyers on the whole, needed lawyers.
And Jeffy and the lawyers he selected were recomended by SNAP. A symbiotic relationship that your side has complained about from the get go. But how did this benefit my side, the victims side? It. didn't. It benefited our lawyers not us.
So what I'm saying is If SNAP has all the clients you want. You as a lawyer dance to SNAP's tune and the Church, who set up SNAP as that holding pen for victims, controls a big chunk of the show. It could select who it's lead opposition legally was. by which lawyer was recomended by SNAP.
And who ever got the most clients became the lead lawyer. In L.A. jeff anderson chose Kiesell Bouchet and Larson. Bouchet was the lead lawyer here. Complicated but not difficult.
As far as billions paid out? Chump change compared to what could and should be paid to the injured.
again look where ever SNAP and Tommy Doyle have raised their lovely heads, how much victims have recieved. $60,000 ,$ 70,000 very diffrent from California's, L.A.'s, average of $1,000,000.
As I have said when it comes to SNAP look at the actions that have occurred not what's being said. They don't jibe at all.
I know you lot think any money paid is either good enough or too much but you are "special' people. And juries don't think like you.
P.S. Why was L.A. the only exception, Snap and Doyle were here?
I'll tell you. The L.A. Archdiocese is the richest in the world. Why? At it's core is the Doheny money. worth $1 billion in the 20's,the "spoils" of the Tea Pot Dome scandal. all left to the L.A. Archdiocese. when Mrs. Doheny died
.It could easilly, relatively, afford 350 million ,the Church's share of the settlement. insurors paid the rest.
Also L.A.'s the media capitol of the world if L.A.'s settlements are big (comparatively) the public will think all victims have been compensated fairly. The exact oppsite is the case.
Part of what I've said above is speculative, I agree, but my speculation is based on very real behaviors played out on my and other victims bodies and minds by people pretending to represent us whom we've never voted for.