I Will Not Be Silent, SNAP leafleting at First Communion is Beyond Insensitive, Outright Crude

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Sickened. I'm sickened at the thought of SNAP leafleting outside a Sunday Mass in Chicago last weekend, during First Communion ceremonies.

Apologies to individuals who took part, but that bristles to me as a totally wrong thing to do, an inappropriate place to hand out material about pedophilia. Shows an insensitivity that to me is totally counter intuitive. Not only insensitive to all victims who never want to step on or near church property, so they are automatically eliminated from the processs.

But First Communion, all those kids wondering what that piece of paper was that made their parents so angry. To me, this sends a total wrong message to church goers, a message that "survivors" in SNAP are callous and insensitive.

I don't want to be represented in this way. I wonder how many other of the hundreds of thousands of crime victims, if nine thousand of them really are members of SNAP, how many have asked SNAP to stop leafleting at Sunday masses and elementary schools and places where the leaflets get into the wrong hands.

One, leafleting on church property does NOT get the message to new people who can actually do something, church goers if they haven't gotten the message by now are likely unreachable. All that time and energy should be spent reaching out to law enforcement. Why hasn't SNAP started leafletting in front of U.S. Attorneys offices around the country asking for more grand jury investigations? Trying to actually accomplish something.

But 2: This handing out leaflets about pedophilia to families on Sunday with all those little children at First Communion...

How is that showing any sensitivity?

It shows NO sensitivity, it's... to me it's re-perpetrating, perping back, which some of us do not want to do. The churchgoers do not deserve their Sundays interrupted so harshly.

SNAP does not represent me, never has. I've tried to express this very sincere and genuine concern about the way SNAP leaflets at churches NUMEROUS times to the SNAP hierarchy and they just turn their heads, refuse to listen, and continue to- re-perpetrate. That's what it is, sorry, that's how I see it.

Leafleting at First Communion, the kids get their hands on the leaflet, it's so inappropriate!

It really bothers me that SNAP claims to represent survivors, because tactics like this are the OPPOSITE of what should be going on right now in a network of crime victims rebuilding their lives.

Why isn't there a group health isurance plan? Why isn't there a couple of recovery centers around the country by now? What has SNAP really accomplished other than getting its name in the news over and over again, with no substance behind the press statements?

They bring in $750,000 in a bad year, according to their own statements and IRS papers, and there is absolutely nothing of substance to show for twenty-one years of SNAP that's Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, for Google to find

After 21 years, there is not even a genuine network of survivors.

It's all been one big press event, with nothing behind it, there is not even a man behind the curtains to pay no attention to, just empty space. Survivors have all learned to accept that, as just what SNAP does, press events, and we tolerate it, take part in it, or abhor it, as I do. Press events are NOTHING, empty space. But hey that's what SNAP does and I've learned to turn my back.

Except when they do really damaging things, like leafletting at First Communion ceremonies. That just pushes the SNAP disconnect beyond acceptability at all.

Kay Ebeling.