We welcome you to the SNAP Australia meetings and contact page. We hope you will find the comfort, help and friendship we have been privileged to enjoy. SNAP is a grass-roots organization made up wholly of survivors and support persons. We were sexually abused, most of us as children, by clergy. Survivors seek healing and empowerment and find it by joining with other survivors. The only requirement for membership is that of being a survivor or support person.
As a result of the abuse, some survivors have chosen to have no association with any church. Some among us have become members of other faiths, while some have stayed active, to various degrees, within their church. There are priests and sisters and other clergypersons among us who are themselves survivors. The clergy members, among the SNAP membership, attend as survivors only, and not in their role of representatives of their church. In the SNAP meeting, we are all peers. SNAP members shed any professional roles and titles when they enter these rooms.
The SNAP organization has a threefold purpose: 1) to provide self-help support to survivors; 2) to share resources and information among survivors; 3) to organize for political action to challenge the institutional Catholic Church and other religious organizations to better deal with the problem of its priests' and clergies' sexual misconduct. You may join for one, two of all three purposes. There are many opportunities within SNAP but no requirements. Sometimes healing comes simply from listening. It is up to the individual how she or he wishes to participate.
SNAP members share their experiences without judging those of others. SNAP meetings and attendance are confidential. Everything that is said in the meeting and member-to-member, must be held in the strictest confidence. Only in this way, can we feel safe to discuss what is in our minds and hearts.