Justice Anne Burke, now an Ilinois Supreme Court Judge, will be a featured speaker during a national gathering of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) to be held July 30 to Aug. 1 at Holiday Inn Chicago.
From 2002 to 2004, Burke chaired the National Review Board established by the bishops in their historic 2002 meeting in Dallas where they adopted a charter that mandated measures to combat sexual abuse of children by priests.
Burke has since been highly critical of a number of church leaders, charging that the bishops “got away with concealing crime.”
Also speaking will be Dominican Fr. Tom Doyle, who early on blew the whistle on how the church was handling the crisis. Doyle, once on staff at the Vatican Embassy, has since served as a canon law expert for many victims of sex abuse in their legal actions against the church.
“Our theme for this event and our two main goals are healing and prevention, here and around the world,” said Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, SNAP’s outreach director. “As the church’s on-going scandal spreads across the globe, now more than ever, victims need to know that they are not alone.”
