The Story That Won't Go Away

I believe SNAP was created by the bishops around 1984 to do damage control and keep the story of pedophile priests as untold as possible.  Read the posts below here at CofA 2 for more about the experience I had producing this blog that caused me to come to these conclusions.  
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UPDATE:  September 2014:  Why did SNAP go to the Center for Constitutional Rights to file theor cases first with the Hague and then with the UN, when there were survivors chomping on the bit for decades for an opportunity to take action at this level. Instead SNAP left everyone else out of the loop and in secret went to a group in NY that does great work but was uneducated in the ways of the Vatican and the needs of survivors nationwide. Why? Why leave out experienced educated people who you claim to represent, professionals who've been studying this issue for decades, and instead outsource this important work to strangers? Especially since survivors on their own had been trying since at least 2006 to take international steps and SNAP had ignored us.

UPDATE: April 2014: The Hague filing was started by survivors in Germany in Spring 2011 then SNAP held a press conference and it segued into a Hague filing by SNAP in Fall 2011, then it turned into the Feb 2014 UN filing and now nobody in the general public knows it even happened, most the survivors don't know either. SNAP took it over, kept it from getting big, then let it die.

UPDATE: July 2014:  UN verbally sanctions the Vatican then no one heard about it. SNAP took over work other survivors were doing, made it theirs with great media fanfare, then let it fizzle and die.

UPDATE JULY 2014: They just held a 25th Anniversary conference and barely mentioned this major accomplishment at the UN, after all that work there was never any follow-up using their local branches to inform local media around the world, which is what a REAL survivor organization would do. SNAP barely publicized their own work.  That Makes No Sense unless they are Counter Intelligence, whose sole purpose is nullifying the survivor movement.  And they succeeded, bk it takes people so long to realize what SNAP is that the damage is already done by the time people figure it out.

In Feb 2010 I published my belief that SNAP was counter intelligence*, created to control the pedophile priest survivors and run damage control over the story as it broke across the USA and now across the world.  At the time SNAP's reaction to what I wrote at City of Angels Blog was as revealing as all the things victims had been telling me across the country, that SNAP keeps survivors from accomplishing anything they try at a local level.  For publishing what I found out in Feb 2010 I got blackballed and shunned, as if it were the middle ages.

But in the years since, no one from SNAP showed me I was wrong.

In fact SNAP's reaction proves what I was saying was true, and little bits of evidence support it  Wherever the story breaks, wherever pedophile priest survivors and activists are doing something on their own, SNAP shows up and with its extensive resources, takes over the story and becomes the focal point of it.  Then after one or two press events, you never hear anything about it again.  SNAP returns to St. Louis, and the locals activists are left impotent, SNAP takes all the contact information with them when they leave.

Watch.  It will happen now with the UN, like it did with The Hague, a flurry of activity in the press, then no follow-up. [So far that's what happened. A flurry of activity with UN in Feb 2014, then crickets, and no one but a few people following the story even know it happened- ke July '14)

The insight I got about how SNAP operates that I got from interviewing survivors all across the country in 2007-10 was exactly what SNAP was trying to keep me or any journalist from finding out.  So they set out to snuff me out as a writer and reporter on this subject.  And they almost succeeded, why wouldn't they, when they have all the resources of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops behind them?

They fly anywhere in the country, now the world, where the story is breaking and immediately start running damage control.

Look more closely.  Nothing SNAP does results in bishops losing their power.  SNAP actively publicizes cases that are already in the news, but they've usually shown up after the story breaks.  Or the stories they choose to break fizzle, or involve lay teachers and non Catholic predators, or in the end make the church look good.  The reader is left wondering why SNAP chose that case to publicize, out of the hundreds of thousands of cases out there.  Lord knows SNAP does not consult with the hundred thousand survivors in any way.  SNAP's actual goal appears to be steering plaintiffs to attorneys, who then file lawsuits, and all details of these crimes remain secret.

And worst of all, there actually is no support network for the victims of pedophile priests.  Just a series of press events that we watch with detachment because we know the story will never go any farther.

And today's mainstream media just swallow it whole and never dig any deeper.

There are a hundred thousand crime victims in this issue, and no real network of support.  The group that claims to advocate for us actually works for the Church.  There are a few local groups run by sincere local volunteers that meet, but for the most part, pedophile priest victims have all been left out here alone in the hinterlands to watch three people who run SNAP appear over and over in the news, saying they represent us, when they really have nothing to do with any of us.  It's been so weird to be part of this and watch it happen.

See the previous posts here to find out how, after interviewing survivors around the country in spite of SNAP, I discovered this fraud, covered it, and got ostracized. But never proved wrong.

-ke

*Except in Wisconsin.  For some reason Peter Iseley is able to get real things done through SNAP.  Don't know why but in that one place SNAP works.
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I believe U.S. Catholic bishops manipulated crime victims as well as the media to stop the story of pedophile priests from emerging anymore than it had to.  They invented SNAP to appear as activists for "survivors" when its true purpose was to stifle activism and keep grass-roots organizing from taking place. 

Nullification.  SNAP's purpose last two decades in the U.S. was to nullify any work victims did on their own locally.  SNAP would show up, take over, and then the local project would fizzle and disappear.  With few exceptions, SNAP prevented the scandal from emerging in the U.S., while the 2-3 people who run SNAP nationally stood up in front of cameras claiming to represent the victims. 

Today little bits of evidence support what my experience showed me,  that SNAP is counter-intelligence, created by  U.S. Catholic bishops in the mid-1980s to manage the pedophile priest issue as news of it broke, and to keep the crime victims under control. SNAP is the ubiquitous Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.  They don't provide a network or support.  

They run Damage Control  I know.  I was doing damage and I got controlled. 

Posts below were written as events took place.  From the time I started City of Angels Blog in 2007, SNAP was sabotaging me.  I finally realized what they were and wrote it in a post Feb 2010 and became blacklisted and shunned, honest, it was almost medieval.  The posts below still stand the test of time; but they also show my confusion as the incidents took place, so these posts now serve as a rough first draft for a story of intrigue, deception, subterfuge, and reckless disregard for the lives of a hundred thousand crime victims of pedophile priests, on the part of U.S. Catholic bishops and their agents.  

No way I'm going to drop this story, as so many have tried to make me do.  it just may take a few years to polish it and produce it, but I will keep writing it.   -ke