West Virginia’s attorney general is fighting to keep his creative lawsuit against church officials alive. We support his efforts and hope that his lawsuit will not be dismissed.

We applaud West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey who is fighting back against Catholic officials who want to continue concealing clergy sex crimes and cover ups. We hope his creative approach of using consumer protections in order to force church staff into greater transparency will encourage others in law enforcement to take similar steps and think outside the box for ways to get to the bottom of cases of clergy sex abuse and cover-ups.



There are far too many secrets within West Virginia that are still not being exposed. For example, church officials from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston are still not turning over the results of their internal investigation into now-disgraced Bishop Michael Bransfield to the AG's office, despite AG Morrisey’s request.



We hope the new Bishop Mark Brennan will stop spending his flock's hard-earned dollars and donations to fight AG Morrisey’s lawsuit and will instead work with his office to expose and root out the very secrecy that has enabled so many priests to hurt so many innocents.

CONTACT: Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest (snapjudy@gmail.com, 636-433-2511) Zach Hiner, Executive Director (zhiner@snapnetwork.org, 517-974-9009)

(SNAP, the Survivors Network, has been providing support for victims of sexual abuse in institutional settings for 30 years. We have more than 25,000 survivors and supporters in our network. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)