Through my travels with All God’s Children this year, I met some amazing and inspiring people. A couple that stood out right away when I first met them at the SNAP (The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) screening in St. Louis are: Kim and Tim Fischer.
It was the first time we had screened the documentary for survivors and advocates and it meant a lot to us when Tim came right up to me and pointed out how much he appreciated the tone of the film. It turned out that he felt well-represented because he himself is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a priest. And that’s when I found out about all the impressive work that Tim and Kim do and how much they must be helping other people.
Since 2006, Tim Fischer has been writing a very personal and moving blog called “it’s about me” that recounts his story of abuse as an 11-year-old, his journey of recovery and his search for justice.
The first lines of Tim’s first blog entry.
Tim is a great advocate who is also active on twitter and facebook. I’m sure he’s a wonderful person to talk to if you’re a survivor or an advocate. I personally also appreciate his love for music – if it wasn’t for him and our frequent ichats I would have never been at that secret St. Vincent show.
And if those weren’t enough bonding reasons: Kim Fischer is also a documentary filmmaker! And not just that, she’s also been working on projects about child abuse by clergy!
Kim and camera(photo from Kim Fischer’s website)
Here is a great short video about the hard working Barbara Dorris (SNAPs Outreach Director), who we owe a lot of gratitude to for all the outreach she’s done on behalf of our film.
Kim had submitted the video about Barbara Dorris to the first round of the YouTube competition Project Report. She made the cut and eventually for round three submitted the following video, which features Tim Fischer and for which all four subjects were given a camera to record themselves.
The next time we saw Kim was at the SNAP conference in DC, where she was interviewing and video taping non-stop for a full documentary about SNAP.
The image of the one-woman-camera crew looked enticingly familiar and I immediately felt the itch to shoot something again. But for now I’m chained to the computer for editing and distributing and sending well-wishes out to a sister-in-films. Good luck and much energy, Kim! I can’t wait to see the film!!!