Advocates against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church were in
Lawrence Thursday urging local church officials to be more proactive in
outreach to victims.
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by
Priests, said his organization is concerned about the potential for more
sexual abuse victims of former Kansas priest John Martin Fiala.
Fiala, 52, was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Lawrence in September
and extradited to Texas, where he is facing criminal charges for the
alleged sexual abuse of a minor.
Fiala is also charged with trying to
hire a hitman to kill the alleged victim, according to the San Antonio
Express-News reports.
Fiala served in the St. Joseph’s parish in Shawnee in 2001 and 2002,
followed by several months at a parish in Holton, according to news
reports.
Clohessy spoke at a news conference in front of the Judicial and Law Enforcement building, 11 E. 11th St., today.
“The local church officials have a moral and civic obligation to
reach out and try to find anyone he may have hurt,” Clohessy said. Those
are steps the Archdiocese of Kansas City Kansas has yet to take, he
said.
“We’ve seen no evidence that they’ve done real outreach,” he said.
Clohessy said that there have not been any reported allegations that Fiala sexually abused anyone during his tenure in Kansas.
Rose Hammes, director of communication and planning, took issue with
Clohessy's allegations in an email statement to the Journal-World on
Thursday.
"The SNAP statements are erroneous. We did work with all of the
parishes that had contact with Fiala, inviting anyone from those
parishes, if they had suffered abuse, to contact us. It was published in
the parish bulletins. No one contacted the Archdiocese," Hammes said.
A June 2010 Journal-World feature
outlined allegations of sexual abuse in all four of the Kansas Catholic
Dioceses.
At that time, no one from any of the Dioceses would agree to
an interview with the Journal-World regarding allegations of abuse.