Lawyers defending a Missouri Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse
have requested that the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests be
held in contempt for allegedly not fulfilling a court order to turn over
a range of internal documents and correspondence.
SNAP, the leading advocacy group for clergy sex abuse victims,
replied to the request Monday afternoon, claiming it has "attempted in
good faith" to comply with the order.
The back-and-forth, made in Jackson County, Mo., court filings, are
the latest legal moves in a months-long saga regarding SNAP, which has
been ordered to turn over about 23 years of files.
While SNAP has previously argued the document request violates the
freedom of speech and the rights of association of SNAP's members and
volunteers, the court filings state the group handed over a series of
files to the priest's lawyers in late August and early September.
Those files, the priest's lawyers say in their Sept. 20 motion, were
"heavily and inappropriately redacted and incomplete" and did not
include files requested by the court regarding two other priests.
The lawyers ask Jackson County, Mo., Judge Ann Mesle to set a hearing
date to consider the matter then issue "appropriate sanctions" on SNAP
and its executive director, David Clohessy.
In a response to the priest's lawyers' motion filed Monday afternoon,
SNAP replied that its redactions in the material were in compliance
with a previous ruling by Mesle that specified that references in the
documents to "names and personally identifiable information about all
individuals ... are to be deleted."
SNAP also says it did not submit the materials regarding the two other priests.
In a letter addressed to Mesle and released to the media Monday
morning, Clohessy asked the judge to postpone the request for files on
those priests until pending civil suits against them are resolved.
As of Tuesday morning, no hearing date has been set for the issue.
The document requests stem from Mesle's order July 17 to SNAP in a
case concerning Kansas City diocesan priest Fr. Michael Tierney, who has
been accused of abuse.
The case, in which SNAP is not a party, made
headlines in January when it became the first in which one of the
group's leaders, Clohessy, was ordered to provide testimony.
According to the transcript of Clohessy's January deposition, first
made public in March, the SNAP leader refused to answer many of the
lawyers' questions, saying SNAP is afforded protections under Missouri
statutes that protect the confidentiality of rape crisis centers.
Whether or not SNAP should be considered such a center has been the
focus of much attention in the case. In court filings, Tierney's lawyers
have said SNAP could not be considered such a center because it
frequently issues press releases identifying victims.
Among the files requested from SNAP: all correspondence with members
of the press that mention Tierney or the diocese; all documents that
refer to priests currently or formerly associated with the diocese; and
all correspondence with members of the public "that discusses or relates
to repressed memory in conjunction with cases involving" the Kansas
City diocese.
Tierney's defense lawyers have argued SNAP could be inappropriately
coaching victims it helps regarding issues of repressed memory.
While the alleged abuse in the Kansas City case occurred about 40
years ago, the victim has said his memory regarding the event only
returned in recent years, within the time-frame of Missouri's statute of
limitations for abuse lawsuits where repressed memory is an issue.
Mesle, the Kansas City judge who ordered SNAP to grant access to the
documents, said in April that any documents from the group defense
lawyers have access to will be marked confidential and kept in the
possession of one of SNAP's lawyers, and a log of all access to the
documents will need to be kept.
SNAP previously filed appeals to prevent the handover of documents to
Missouri's Court of Appeals and its Supreme Court to stop the document
request, which it lost.
When the group sought intervention from the state's high court,
several groups filed amicus briefs with the court that supported SNAP's
position, including 24 victims' advocacy and church reform groups and
six former and current local, state and federal prosecutors.
The Kansas City order, the victims' advocacy groups said in their
brief, could lead to further victimization and ultimately "intimidate,
harass, and silence victims of sexual abuse."