A SNAP news conference today

I got the following email today: SNAP--Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests--will be holding a news conference today at 2:30 pm. We will be at the Kansas City Catholic chancery office at 20 West Ninth Street (corner of Baltimore). More details will be coming shortly. Good for them. I hope they have good news for us, especially, possibly on Bishop Finn (and how he should go). More here: a clergy sex abuse victim who has never spoken publicly will --announce his new civil lawsuit accusing two priests of molesting him as a boy, and --disclose that he saw one of the priests molest three other boys (one of whom later committed suicide). He will also beg anyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups to come forward & get help. WHEN: TODAY, Thursday, Sept. 1 at 2:30 PM WHERE: Outside the Kansas City Catholic diocesan headquarters (“chancery office”), 20 West Ninth Street (at Baltimore) in Kansas City, MO. WHO: The victim, who is speaking publicly for the first time, along with several of his friends and one-two clergy sex abuse victims who belong to a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org) WHY: According to the new suit, the victim, Jon David Couzens, was molested by two KC area priests. He saw one cleric molest three boys, two of whom later committed suicide. The first alleged predator was Fr. Isaac True, who reported assaulted Jon around 1978-79 when John was nine year old on at least two occasions. The second alleged predator was Msgr. Thomas J. O'Brien, who reportedly molested John in 1981-82. Jon witnessed O’Brien sexually abuse three other boys. One of them has since committed suicide, the suit says. Most of the crimes against John happened at Nativity parish in Independence, where both priests worked. O’Brien was ordained in 1950and is believed to be about 80 years old. He faces allegations that he molested two dozen children (sometimes along with F.r Thomas Reardon) while at a cabin on Lake Viking (northeast of Kansas City) and several parishes (St. Patrick’s in Kansas City North, St. Elizabeth’s, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Independence). He worked at several Catholic institutions (St. Pius X High school and St. Joseph Health Center). He still lives in the KC area and kept working as a priest until 2002. In 2008, Kansas City church officials refused demands by victims to have O’Brien defrocked. He remains a priest today. True was ordained in 1966 and has spent most of his career at Conception Abbey in Conception Missouri, north of Kansas City, where he is still working now. He belongs to a Catholic religious order called the Benedictines. In June, another Benedictine cleric from that same abbey, Fr. Bede Parry, was sued for molesting a Kansas City area boy. Couzens just turned 41, lives in the Kansas City area, is married and employed. CONTACT David Clohessy, SNAP Executive Director 314-566790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com, Barbara Dorris, SNAP Outreach Director 314-862-7688 home, 314-503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com, Mike Hunter, SNAP Kansas City Director 913-634-6490.

NASCAR, anyone?

Lindsay Lohan?

Check.

Eric Massa?

Check.

Sex scandals?

Check.

Afghanistan and Iraq wars?

Fugghedaboudit.

Reporting from The Kansas City Star

I wrote about this some time ago and here I have to go again.

On the way to work today, I was listening--as I always do--to KCUR, the local NPR station through UMKC and heard their coverage of a Kansas City Business Journal article on real estate in Kansas City .

They told of how it's soft, at least, but that we are nowhere near as bad as other places in the country like Florida and California and Las Vegas, of course.

And that's all fine and good.

But what galls me, what really kills me is that this is just the kind of article The Kansas City Star should write, first of all, and should have written months ago.

Both the commercial residential real estate markets in town are so soft it's just neither pretty nor funny.

If you drive the most-prized Plaza area, and you know what you're looking for and at, you can see condominiums left and right that are empty and waiting for buyers.

And the same goes--all over town--for commercial real estate in general and retail in specific.

But do you think you'd see an article about this in the local newspaper in the last year?

Nope.

Absolutely not.

It's an important story. It could get them terrific readership. It needs to be covered.

But who's covering it?

The Kansas City Business Journal, first, and KCUR, second, by covering their, first article.

It's pathetic.

If the Star wants readership--and of course they have to--you'd think they would know to cover important local stories like these that no one else is better positioned to cover.

But they don't. Or won't.

And I have to come to one of two conclusions.

They either don't have enough imagination to know they should be covering stories like these--which I view as highly, highly unlikely and improbable--or they want to go soft on articles like these, dealing with business and real estate so they don't offend anyone's sensibilities in the business community. They don't want to come off as negative so as to put a further damper on business, at least in the minds of their potential advertisers.

And if the answer is the 2nd one--and I think it may well be--that's a great way to further kill a newspaper.

They'd rather send a reporter, instead of around the city, to South America, to report on the sex-trafficking trade.

Strange priorities, indeed.