SNAP Revolution in L.A. Today. Event Friday 11 AM to be Last at Cathedral, Moving Future Action to Federal Building

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Ya Basta! This morning Jim Robertson was elected to run the new SNAP Los Angeles, and not a day too soon, as SNAP sent out the press statement below last night with a major error, referring to the "Paracletes." The religious order they referenced are "Servants of the Paraclete."

A lot of Los Angeles survivors had grown weary of continuing professional mess-ups that we have learned to expect from SNAP in Los Angeles the last few years. As a result the press is not getting the whole story and many survivors dropped out of the movement locally, agreeing among ourselves that we need representatives who live in Los Angeles, not Orange and Ventura Counties. Most of us in L.A. are media savvy enough to run a press conference, we don't need or want David Clohessy in St. Louis to tell us what to say and do.

There will be an event in front of the Cathedral Friday at eleven AM, and Jim promises it will be the last event in front of the Cathedral until things change. On Friday, we may actuall march to the new location for future events, three blocks south to the Federal Building, I believe it will be at the Main Street entrance, where we can leaflet and start conversations with individuals who can actually DO SOMETHING about prosecuting the perverts in the Catholic priesthood and their enablers.

Below is yet another press statement from SNAP from whoever was running the Los Angeles branch before today, when veteran activist Jim Robertson finally took over.

Survivors in Los Angeles now have local control and we can build a democratically run organization.

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SNAP PRESS STATEMENT WITH ANOTHER GREAT BIG MISTAKE
Hopefully the last incorrect press statement to come out of SNAP in Los Angeles for a long time:
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Please consider coming to this event!

Clergy sex victims release more church records

Church had 'centers' for predators as far back as 50 years ago

Frustrated by 'on-going church secrecy,' SNAP urges Pope to 'come clean'

Group is also upset because LA archdiocese & priests still hiding documents

One Catholic official admitted that 30% of rejected seminarians are later ordained

What

Holding signs and child hood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will release a dozen pages of once secret church records proving that the Pope and other top Catholic officials - in Rome and here - knew much about pedophile priests even decades ago. (Several of the documents have never been released before publicly). They will also urge

-- the Pope to disclose how he and his office handled pedophile priests for years from 2001-05, and

-- Cardinal Roger Mahony to prod the Pope to directly answer questions about recent allegations against the Pope,

-- Mahony to speed up the release of thousands of pages about LA predator priests and cover ups.

When

Wednesday, March 31 at 11:00 a.m.

Where

Outside Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St. (at N. Grand Ave.) in Los Angeles

Who

A few clergy sex abuse victims who belong to a support group called SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, including a California police officer who did a week-long vigil in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels seven years ago.

Why

Newly released records, including letters to the Vatican in the 1960s, show a Catholic official admitting a "tremendous problem" of predator priests. The documents prove that almost 50 years ago, top church staff knew how widespread and incorrigible pedophiles are. They severely undercut recent claims by the Pope's defenders that he and others in the church hierarchy mishandled cases because they were "on a learning curve."

Some of the records are written by the head of the Paracletes, a religious order that tries to rehabilitate predator priests. Decades ago, he admitted that "There are now in many parts of the world (facilities) "where 'Christ's wounded priests' may be cared for." In another shocking acknowledgement, he said that 30% of all priesthood candidates who are first rebuffed because of "question(able) qualifications" are later ordained because "someone in authority overruled" the initial rejection. He also urged the Vatican to adopt a "heavy penalty" for those "tampering with the innocence of the young," including "retirement . . .within a monastery" or "complete (defrocking)," in part because "Many experienced priests agree (we) not turning out men as dedicated to their priesthood as we did in former days."

The cleric had a private audience with then-Pope Paul VI and later wrote that he opposed "the return of priests to active duty that have been addicted to abnormal practices, especially sins with the young."

These records, and thousands of other similar pages, were to be made public as part of the $660 million Los Angeles Archdiocese settlement in 2007. Church defense lawyers are still fighting to keep those records hidden.

Several times during his papacy, Benedict has urged bishop to be "transparent" with child sex cases. In light of his advice, and recent disclosures of abuse and cover up in the Pope's home diocese in Germany, SNAP wants the pontiff to publicly disclosed how he handled hundreds of cases from across the globe from 2001-2005 as head of CDF (the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), the Vatican office where all such cases are sent.

SNAP is holding a similar event simultaneously in St. Louis, where the Paracletes are now headquartered. (314-965-0860, stmichael@primary.net, http://www.theservants.org/servants.htm) It's headed by Fr. Peter Lechner.

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WE NEED TO PLEDGE to do research and know the subject matter starting DAYS BEFORE conducting any press events. No more embarrassment for L.A. Survivors, as we watch our "spokesmen" get up and say incorrect information, stumble, not know names, not know where the church was, which perp, I for one am so glad that period of the strangelhold from St. Louis we have had is over, and we can finally start doing things right in Los Angeles:

Personally, I'm frustrated with SNAP secrecy and think the organization has no credibility calling for transparency from the Pope when it hides all its own records and actions and backgrounds and everything it does from all but a handful of survivors.

YA BASTA!

Enough of this impotence. SNAP is going to accomplish things in Los Angeles, starting this Good Friday.

It's weird they would make a mistake about "The Paracletes"

Weird, considering both SNAP and "The Servants of the Paraclete" are headquartered in St. Louis:
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V Prophecy

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"They are arming themselves with the best weapon out there."

"What weapon is that?"

"Devotion."

Watch Full Episodes

(Except I really hope female FBI agents wear more fabric and cover themselves more in blouses than the characters here, it's TV. Barbara Blaine reminds me of Anna.)
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What a Strange Coincidence... Robbed of our Birth Certificates, neither of us can travel for months

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Another of the adult victims who is verbal like me said they would have gone to Europe too but about a month ago they were robbed of just one item, an envelope with their birth certificate in it, when they were taking it to a government office. My friend said the envelope was snatched out of the hand by a thief who then ran off. So that survivor is now waiting for a new set of documents ... and efforts to get a passport have been put off by months.

I got a chill when I heard that, because some time between last September and now my birth certificate left my home somehow, nothing else was stolen but my documents. The Birth Certificate and original SS card were in an envelope in a safe place, put back there last September after needing them, then GONE last week when I needed my ID papers again.

My friend and I both may have wanted to go to Europe to get arrested at the Vatican too, but would not have even been able to try it, as without our ID documents we cannot even apply for passports.

It's just funny that two people who are independently vocal on this issue would have the same things stolen from them around the same time, preventing us both from being able to travel for a while... we both have other valuable things that could be stolen, we both were only robbed of our birth certificates...

My friend was going to a government office where they had asked for the documents to be brought in. Me, I have a 21 year old daughter with a variety of friends from farflung places who come through the apartment all hours of the day and night. I already made one of her boyfriends last year as an agent of some kind and he disappeared after I mentioned it, he was looking too closely at things, his story didn't add up...

Anything can happen to you when you write on this topic, it could just be free lance opus dei types agitating on their own, it could all be run by the Vatican. I like to document it all here, as someday maybe in ten years, it will reveal a pattern.

Good morning, everyone, personally I am tired of reading about the Pope and the CDF myself, not tired, but getting kind of numb, like how much evidence do people need. The story I am working on now for a future post is about serial sodomy of a young boy, and the details of these crimes are becoming redundant.

I won't be satisfied until I see some kind of international court seek real justice and prosecution of people who let children get raped like we were.

AMAZED at how much media is just spitting out what other reporters write. We are living in the world of copy and paste news dissemination.

At City of Angels we ALWAYS write what has not been reported in most other places. When I was in J school we were taught NEVER repeat what other reporters have written as that is not NEW, as in Not News. We were taught to throw away press releases as they were just pap from a corporate flack, good for little more than a phone number and address if you need it.

Watching news about this issue and the Pope and all of it, past few years, it has been amazing how aside from the New York Times, most other publications are just running wire copy. Not even attributing it sometimes, just lifting paragraphs and rerunning them as their own.

At age 8, I got a printing press for my birthday and started a neighborhood newspaper, putting one little rubber letter at a time into the columns and producing full pages of stories. At a Bible Study recently someone asked what would you be doing if you were there when Christ got executed. I said, I would have a scroll and pen and be writing it all down.

Can't fight your DNA.
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good morning
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Did 4 SNAP guys getting arrested help get the Wiscon deaf school story out? I don't know about that, I think the New York Times did a good job of getting out that story, with or without the SNAP arrests ...

Did you notice, though, that SNAP released the arrival of the whole crew in Rome in a press release, all the names, almost with a flight number and time of arrival, they were getting that information into press releases last week.

Then they were detained and taken off to talk to... ?
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good mid-morning...
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Oh Now I See What They Did

Truth Out...

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The real reason I'm not covering hearings in L.A. Superior Court is I don't have five dollars for a Metro Day Pass. There has been almost no work on my job, I barely make the rent each month, pay the utilities, then... stay in my rental and use the utilities for a month. Go for walks. We often go without food as well but I've learned to be grateful for that, we both needed to lose weight. I got tired of asking for money to support this work through PayPal as most of the people who ever sent high fives were people I knew really didn't have money themselves, people with young children. So I quit asking. I figure City of Angels is like an ongoing audition. Someday someone will stumble across it and contact me for a book deal or a screenwriting job and I'll finally be able to move out of the slums. I'd like to be going to the Courthouse and just buying documents, they're all down there in the Archives, at fifty cents a page. But lots of these docs are hundreds of pages. Like I said, I can't buy a Bus Pass most weeks. This is truly a humbling experience. I grew up in houses with swimming pools in towns like Forest Hills, New York, and San Marino, CA. Today each month, we pay the bills, then dangle by a thread. My daughter gets sick but can't afford the copay to see a doctor after paying for her insurance. That has happened to her at least three times in six months. Me, I still only go to an L.A. Free Clinic and have never seen a real doc in years. My teeth are all rotting in my mouth, I have learned not to open my mouth too much when I smile or talk or I gross people out, I can see it on their face, they look at my teeth and go wretch. It is in these conditions that we produce City of Angels. We don't get paid by anyone for anything and if we ever get any money again, you will start to see documents from the 510 L.A. Clergy Cases be scanned in here, as we've tried to do but as I said, it's fifty cents a page. The "movement" invested in four people to travel to the Vatican for a few weeks... and those documents sit in L.A. Superior Court archives unread because City of Angels does not have bus fare. So maybe I'm just full of sour grapes, but face it, wouldn't you be, too?

Why Do I Write This Stuff?

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Because otherwise it would be running and running through my head and driving me crazy. I can't just go through life knowing all this stuff really happened and turn the other way. It's my karma, my curse, I'm even partially crippled these days, so often stranded at home alone with no thing more to do than put my hands on the keyboard, and no real skill other than an ability to observe and type fast.

I have to get out ALL the stuff that's hammering around in my head, rather than let it drive me insane.

Isn't it difficult, though, to travel in a population of people whose one main common characteristic is an inherent inability to trust anyone...

As an adult victim of a pedophile priest, if you were very young at the age of the assaults, that distrust got into your very cells as they were developing. A reaction of distrust is instinctive to many of us, like coughing when dust enters your throat.

Especially when I sense someone is not being totally truthful, there is an immediate connection, a knowing, recognizing lies, because as children we had to observe lies at such a base level at such a young age.

There are some advantages to having PTSD, it makes you very... alert.
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2 Journalists on their own try to get out whole story of Pope collusion and coverup of pedophile priest crimes

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So it was just me and Jay Nelson, trying to get our small unfinanced voices into the news, last weekend, releasing the part of the story where the Pope was involved in collusion and coverup of pedophile priest crimes since at least the turn of the century.

SNAP ignored the CDF in its 30-plus press events last weekend. As a result only CNN in the UK and one or two other media reported on the Pope's years of having judicial review of pedophile priest sex crime charges when he ran the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith).

CNN STORY

Jay and I got the information out as well as we could, ignored by Abuse Tracker as always for Jay, since last Super Bowl Sunday for me. When I stopped writing PR puff pieces for SNAP and instead started reporting what they really do, City of Angels got Banned from Abuse Tracker. Go figure.

That means nothing we've reported at City of Angels 8 and at AlterNet since Feb. 7, 2010, has gone into the Bishop Accountability database through Abuse Tracker, even though many stories in the past weeks held facts that are not being reported anywhere else.

If anyone is really paying attention, notice the Vatican as well as everyone else is putting the focus on ONE CASE in Munich where Ratzinger may have helped a perpetrator priest transfer to a new territory.

That, my friends, is very professionally employed Spin.

Put all the focus on one small case, and divert attention as well as you can from the real criminal activity.

Of course brainless mainstream media fall for it, as most reporters don't have time anymore to do more than read a press release, after the way news staffs have been cut in the past two decades.

But those of us who have been watching pedo-priest events for several years should be able to see through media spin.
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Any friends I lose for writing what I believe to be true are not really friends to begin with.

Beauty Found Around L.A.

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Photos by Kay Ebeling, please credit if used
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Scans to Illustrate: I Lived in a Car with my Teenage Daughter on the Streets of L.A. for 2 Years and Survived to Write About It, Part 1, at AlterNet

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These scans illustrate story at AlterNet











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We Fix Our Gaze on things that cannot be seen. They will last forever. Things we can see will soon be gone

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I love Bible Studies. Even if you don't believe in the woo-woo mystical Son of God stuff, there is a blueprint for living your life to be found inside the New Testament, such as:

7 We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

8 We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. 9 We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed ....

18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

2nd Corinthians 4