Saints fight to avoid disclosing emails in Catholic abuse crisis (MERGED) (2 Viewers)

So the Saints PR team helps the Church disclose the names of credibly accused abusers, through the media. How does this warrant a justification to make all their emails public? Publishing a list is the opposite of hiding, no?

I don't think anyone is being accused of covering up pedophilia in this case. It's the corporate response that the Church has decided to use which people find so appalling. Make it all public. Own up to what was done, who did it, and make restitution. Stop trying to "soften the blow" or whatever the frick.
 
This points directly at Gayle (or Tom) as I don’t know anyone else in the organization that fought for the Catholic Archdiocese.

At any rate, if we had a hand at covering this up I will be done. That goes beyond reprehensible.
Reportedly it's the opposite of a cover up. The PR team was helping with strategy to release the names of the kids who were abused, not cover the names up. Benson was tight with the Archbishop. It makes sense that he'd use his PR team from his billion dollar business to help his friend if he could.

Attorneys for the Saints acknowledged in a court filing that the team assisted the archdiocese in its publishing of the credibly accused clergy list, but said that was an act of disclosure — “the opposite of concealment.”

A handful of Saints emails that emerged last year in the clergy abuse litigation included an October 2018 exchange in which Bensel asked an archdiocese spokeswoman whether there might be “a benefit to saying we support a victims right to pursue a remedy through the courts.”

“I don’t think we want to say we ‘support’ victims going to the courts,” Sarah McDonald, the archdiocese’s communications director, replied, “but we certainly encourage them to come forward.”

ETA: Can we get a merge?
 
Seriously, it seems like all the Saints did was advise the church on PR for handling the sex abuse scandal in how to go about announcing the names. With Benson being close to the Archbishop, it makes sense that he'd use the PR team from his billion dollar company to help his friend with a strategy. And it wasn't a strategy for a cover up (at least it seems) but rather to uncover things.
This is the key part of the article to me:
Attorneys for the men suing the church say “multiple” Saints personnel, including Senior Vice President of Communications Greg Bensel, used their team email to advise church officials on “messaging” and how to soften the impact of the archdiocese’s release of a list of clergy members “credibly accused” of sexual abuse.

They were never gonna fight to keep the names hidden. The archdiocese was always gonna release the names.
 
This is the key part of the article to me:
Attorneys for the men suing the church say “multiple” Saints personnel, including Senior Vice President of Communications Greg Bensel, used their team email to advise church officials on “messaging” and how to soften the impact of the archdiocese’s release of a list of clergy members “credibly accused” of sexual abuse.

They were never gonna fight to keep the names hidden. The archdiocese was always gonna release the names.
Exactly:

Attorneys for the Saints acknowledged in a court filing that the team assisted the archdiocese in its publishing of the credibly accused clergy list, but said that was an act of disclosure — “the opposite of concealment.”

A handful of Saints emails that emerged last year in the clergy abuse litigation included an October 2018 exchange in which Bensel asked an archdiocese spokeswoman whether there might be “a benefit to saying we support a victims right to pursue a remedy through the courts.”

“I don’t think we want to say we ‘support’ victims going to the courts,” Sarah McDonald, the archdiocese’s communications director, replied, “but we certainly encourage them to come forward.”

This was all about a PR strategy for releasing the names of those credibly accused in the sex scandal, not covering it up.
 
I have had contact with some of the religious personnel associated with the team and I can tell you there are some unhealthy relationships there. Authoritarians of the worst degree and definitely the kind of people who would put reputation and institutional strength over treating each person with integrity and care. This is easy to do in life when we have power and when we feel like we are responsible for a brand or company or a Church that only thrives when it appears to do no wrong. I wish the team did not have these kinds of deeply woven ties.
 
The article's lead paragraph is erroneous. It's a small, subtle error ... but it puts the Saints in an artificially bad light.

This part of the lead paragraph:

"... hundreds of emails that allegedly show team executives doing public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese ... "

should read

" ... hundreds of emails that allegedly show team executives advising on how best to do public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese ... "

And then, this:

“Obviously, the Saints should not be in the business of assisting the Archdiocese, and the Saints’ public relations team is not in the business of managing the public relations of criminals engaged in pedophilia,” the attorneys wrote in a court filing.

The Saints' PR staff was not managing the public relations of "criminals engaged in pedophilia"! They were offering advice to industry peers who themselves were absolutely not pedophiles.

When Penn State hired PR staff to help build back a reputation after Jerry Sandusky's abuses ... were those PR professionals engaged in covering up for Sandusky? Minimizing his crimes? Or were they working in service for the other thousands of Penn State faculty, staff, and students?
 
This could be a total mishandle on AP. They make it seem like the Saints were involved in the cover up. It’s still skeezy to even give pointers. But we need to let this all bear out.

Because the first reaction is very visceral to what was reported.
 
The article's lead paragraph is erroneous. It's a small, subtle error ... but it puts the Saints in an artificially bad light.

This part of the lead paragraph:

"... hundreds of emails that allegedly show team executives doing public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese ... "

should read

" ... hundreds of emails that allegedly show team executives advising on how best to do public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese ... "

And then, this:



The Saints' PR staff was not managing the public relations of "criminals engaged in pedophilia"! They were offering advice to industry peers who themselves were absolutely not pedophiles.

When Penn State hired PR staff to help build back a reputation after Jerry Sandusky's abuses ... were those PR professionals engaged in covering up for Sandusky? Minimizing his crimes? Or were they working in service for the other thousands of Penn State faculty, staff, and students?

Apples to oranges though.

The PR firm that came in after the Penn State scandal was not working with the same administration that actually oversaw the abuses. All of those people were fired and the PR firm came in and worked with the people who replaced Sandusky and Paterno.

Further, Penn State acted with integrity in uncovering, rooting out,and fixing the problem. There was no attempt to hide or massage messaging.

But rather than fight NCAA sanctions as many alumni demanded, the Penn State board switched. The board examined the facts, and saw the failures of oversight and inadequate protection of children. They faced a classic recovery dilemma, and courageously made the right choice…

One of the first, and most important, steps on this path was the appointment Rodney Erickson, a 30-year veteran of the university and its former provost, to step in to fill the leadership void of the ousted predecessor Graham Spanier. In short, they hired a Jimmy Stewart-like pillar of integrity and responsibility…

…The board wisely drew on its reservoir of internal talent as well, asking board member and Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier to chair Penn State's special investigation committee. Frazier is not only a revered CEO but also was the general counsel of Merck who was well battle-tested in public controversy…

In the Saints example, they allegedly helped the same leadership that was in charge during the sexual abuse. And it does not appear that the Church is doing anything similar to what Penn State did to rectify what happened. It appears they're trying to carry on business as usual while taking as little PR damage as possible.

This is serious. I'm withholding judgement for now, until more detail comes out.
 
Further, Penn State acted with integrity in uncovering, rooting out,and fixing the problem. There was no attempt to hide or massage messaging.
Messaging is always "massaged". "Massaged" doesn't necessarily mean "falsified" or "BSed". It can (and usually does from a PR standpoint) mean "doing the least damage". Any kind of proofreading and wordsmithing of public announcement is a form of massaging the messsage.
 

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