Barbara Blaine (1956–2017) was a survivor of abuse by a priest herself and used her platform to expose predators and demand accountability from the Catholic Church.
- Barbara appeared on The Phil Donahue Show in the early 1990s, where she and other survivors broke the silence on Catholic clergy sexual abuse, long before the 2002 Boston Globe revelations.
- The 1993 Broadcast: A historic March 1993 episode of the show featured Blaine along with author and investigative reporter Jason Berry and priest-sociologist Fr. Andrew Greeley, focusing on the sexual abuse of children and adolescents by Catholic priests.
- Impact on the Movement: The appearance served as a critical platform for SNAP, which was then a small, volunteer-run organization struggling to get media attention. The show helped validate victims' experiences and provided a platform to discuss the widespread nature of the abuse and church cover-ups.
----------
Blaine was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, as part of a large, devout Catholic family. In a 2004 interview, Blaine said she was first sexually abused by a priest when she was a 13-year-old between seventh and eighth grade at West Toledo's St. Pius X school. The year was 1969, and the priest was a 42-year-old member of the Oblates of St. Francis DeSales. Chet Warren — subsequently named a defendant in multiple sex abuse lawsuits and a priest identified by the Diocese of Toledo as a serial offender — preyed on Blaine's veneration of priests.
"I was part of a group of junior high girls called 'The Deaconettes' that helped clean up after mass. One Sunday, Father Warren invited me to stay and have dinner with the priests. It was a special honor," Blaine recalled.
"It was really confusing. He started saying things like he knew I had feelings for him like he had for me," and "He started telling me things like how I was holier than other kids and that I was closer to Jesus than other kids."
Then, Blaine said, the priest started to touch her.
Blaine said Warren warned her not to tell afterward: "He said nobody would understand because none of them were as holy and close to Jesus as we were, and somehow, this was blessed by Jesus ... I felt very guilty, ashamed, dirty and embarrassed. He almost didn't have to warn me because I wasn't going to tell anyone."
To add to her fear, Blaine said Warren relied on a common trick of child abusers — he told her no one would believe her.
Blaine said the priest continued to abuse her until she was a senior at her Catholic high school. Her grades suffered, she slept poorly, grew apart from her family and avoided males her own age.
Blaine graduated high school in 1974 and went on to St. Louis University two years later. She eventually earned a master's degree in social work and went to live in a Catholic Worker house in south Chicago where she ran a homeless shelter. She threw herself into the shelter's long hours and heartbreaks until June 1985 when she read a story by Jason Berry in National Catholic Reporter about a priest sexually abusing altar boys that she recalled made her physically sick.
"I didn't, at that point, understand that what had happened to me was really abuse. I just knew that whatever had happened between me and Warren was obviously causing this response … it was post-traumatic stress disorder."
Blaine sought out other victims of clerical abuse. Still living a near ascetic lifestyle with her Catholic worker community, Blaine would organize small meetings in the homeless shelter where she lived or connect with victims by phone. And so SNAP was born in the late 1980s.
SNAP grew slowly at first, but the survivors drew strength from their common bond. "We'd spent so many years thinking we were the only ones — it was really affirming and consoling once we found other people," Blaine remembered.
Somewhere in those early years Blaine began reaching out to media to tell her story and the stories she heard from other survivors. She wanted to connect with others, expose predators and counter the church's tendency to secrecy. Repeatedly — Blaine would recall in later years — victims told of church officials who minimized the abuse or made promises to contain the predators without ever doing so.
Blaine's experience confronting the church started in 1985 — that same year she read the article about the priest abusing altar boys. Then 29, she remembered approaching her tightly-knit Catholic family with her story and receiving full support. Blaine's family went to the Oblates of St. Francis DeSales (her abuser's religious order) as well as Toledo's bishop to ensure her abuser didn't harm other kids.
Speaking for a 2004 interview, Blaine's then 83-year-old mother, Rita Blaine, choked up recalling the family's feelings of betrayal on approaching Church leaders.
"I was so convinced that all I had to do was go over and speak to the Oblates. I had every confidence in the world I'd be received. They weren't belligerent — they listened — but they were very aloof. Then they'd say they'd contact us, but weeks and months would go by without us hearing anything," Rita Blaine said. "The ordeal — it sticks with you even after years. It's not something that ever really goes away."
A subsequent meeting with Toledo's bishop was similarly unsatisfactory, Rita Blaine recalled.
Warren stayed in ministry until being put on leave in September 1992, shortly before Blaine's story was mentioned on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
