Pastor charged for inappropriate contact with teens
He’s a pastor, a husband, and a father of two. Now he’s accused of kissing a teenage girl and sending naked photos to another.
Scott Snyder, 35, shares his ministry with the masses on the internet, at the site God Tube, but it’s his reported use of another technology that’s led to trouble with state police.
“We became aware of it when one of the victims was actually texting in class, in school, and I guess it’s a violation of school policy,” says Tpr. Karl Schmidhamer, Pennsylvania State Police.
That school is Red Lion Area Jr. High School. The time was back in April, and the victim was a 13-year-old girl.
A search of her phone revealed 2,181 text messages between the 13-year-old and Snyder during a one month span. Court records show the texts were inappropriate, and the 13-year-old later told police Snyder kissed her on the lips while giving her a ride home after church in a church van.
The New Beginnings Bible Fellowship Church is on Main Street in Windsor Borough, York County. A man came to the door Wednesday, then shut it, and would not respond to knocks and questions.
Snyder’s other alleged victim is a 14-year-old girl, with whom he reportedly exchanged 1,272 texts between April and late May. Investigators say he also sent the girl photos of his penis.
Pastor Snyder lives in Windsor Borough, but did not answer his phone Wednesday evening or come to the door.
The charges against Snyder are misdemeanors, so state police never actually took him into custody. He has a preliminary hearing set for early October [source].
Expelled priest in NY is AWOL from CK diocese
A controversial priest who was expelled from a diocese in New York is “technically” on AWOL (absence without leave) from the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa, according to Bishop Thomas Camacho.
In an interview yesterday at his office in Mt. Carmel Church, Camacho confirmed that he ordained Fr. Matthew Blockley in 1996. He said the priest left Saipan sometime in 2000 and never came back.
Blockley, an Englishman, was recently expelled by the Diocese of Rockville Centre and was ordered by Bishop William Murphy to immediately cease presenting himself as a priest on Long Island.
Saipan Tribune learned about this through an e-mail from Newsday reporter Bart Jones, who quoted a Rockville Centre spokesman as saying that Blockley had left New York for the CNMI.
Camacho said, though, that Blockley is not here.
Jones reported that Blockley was brought to New York by Msgr. James Lisante, a Fox news commentator, without the knowledge of the diocese there and that Camacho had suspended him because he did not respond to an instruction that he should return to his home diocese.
Jones also reported that some parishioners at the Our Lady of Lourdes in Massapequa Park were angered by some of Blockley’s actions that included removing the statue of the Our Lady of Fatima from the altar.
Lisante, who became the parish pastor there in June and brought with him Blockley, called the protests an overreaction, adding that it was another priest who removed the statue.
Camacho was saddened by these issues but said he will continue to pray for Blockley because “he is still my responsibility.”
The Bishop recalled that Blockley stayed on Saipan about three years prior to his application to become a priest.
He said Blockley went to the Beda College in Rome, which is exclusively for English seminarians.
He also said Blockley went to the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines about two years ago to take up Business Administration.
The Bishop said he wrote letters to Blockley but has never heard of his whereabouts since then [source].
Victim was 7 when abused by priest
Four decades after allegedly being raped and sodomized by a Catholic priest at St. John de la Salle School on the South Side, the burden of her secret shame had become too much to bear.
“I’ve been down the road of therapy and psych meds and wanting nothing more than to die and thinking about suicide all the time,” the 48-year-old Steger resident said Tuesday
“Because it’s a very depressing way to have to live, to bury a secret that’s so big and so bad and you can’t tell a soul because you were threatened by your abuser that if you were to tell, you would go to hell.
“And of course, I believed him. I looked up to him like he was Jesus.”
Albrecht spoke at a news conference called to discuss the record $12.6 million settlement the Archdiocese of Chicago reached with 16 victims of sexual abuse by priests.
“Today is not a happy, joyous day for me,” she said at her lawyer’s Loop office. “I have indescribable anger and profound sadness over what’s happened to me, what’s happened to other kids while they left him in the ministry knowing that he was a rapist and a sodomizer.”
Albrecht said she reported her abuse and abuser, the Rev. Joseph R. Bennett, to the archdiocese in 2004, but, “They acted like they didn’t believe me; they delayed and delayed and delayed.”
In 2006, Cardinal Francis George removed Bennett from ministry, citing the allegations by Albrecht and another woman who says she also was sexually abused by Bennett at St. John de la Salle in the late 1960s.
Bennett’s last appointment was at Holy Ghost Church in South Holland. He now lives in Indiana.
“This man gave me my First Communion. . . . This man was there when I was confirmed,” Albrecht said. “This man married the older sister in my family. . . . He was a family friend as well as our parish priest, and he returned the friendship that my parents gave him and the trust by raping and sodomizing their daughter.”
But, Albrecht added, “My life is different today because now I feel believed by the archdiocese and by Cardinal George, and that makes a big difference.”
Another victim at the news conference, Denver resident Bob Brancato, 39, choked up and wiped away tears as he told of being raped at ages 12 and 13 by his Catholic school principal and the priest to whom he reported the abuse at St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Wheeling.
That priest, James R. Steel, resigned in 1992. In 2006, a review board substantiated Brancato’s claims — four years after he came forward.
“After all those years, 26 years of burying it deep inside, suicide attempts, I now know that it wasn’t my fault,” Brancato said.
And he sees hope in the latest developments.
“The archdiocese,” he said, “has finally taken that cloak of secrecy out of the equation.”
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