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Anderson was a major benefactor of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), an activist group that pushed the bishops, week after week, to disclose the names of perpetrators. SNAP disseminated leaflets outside churches, naming names, attacking negligent bishops. Media coverage expanded the self-help network. SNAP included parents who had lost children to suicide, ex-cops, a cabdriver, a university professor of English, an office secretary, twin brothers each with a master’s degree from Harvard, a portrait painter, computer programmers, real estate agents, a nurse, a subway train driver, an accountant, a physician, teachers, stay-at-home moms, firefighters, several priests, nuns, and recovering addicts or alcoholics of many stripes. SNAP had nine thousand members in 2010. Other plaintiff attorneys donated to SNAP, which relied on donations from victims who received settlements, too. SNAP had a budget exceeding $900,000 in 2006. By 2009 it had fallen to $420,000 against expenses of $490,000. Critics said SNAP should disclose its contributors’ list; many survivors wanted privacy, countered the founder, Barbara Blaine.7

Anderson’s friendship with SNAP leaders Blaine in Chicago, David Clohessy and Barbara Dorris in St. Louis, and Peter Isely in Milwaukee, among others, formed an emotional rudder in his life. Their cause was his cause, their outrage his outrage. He had represented Clohessy, one of three brothers abused by the family priest, in a Missouri case that was thrown out for statute of limitations. One of Clohessy’s brothers became a priest who later abused youngsters; he left the ministry. Across the gulf of suffering, the two brothers had not spoken in years. The family was deeply splintered.

“I wouldn’t know how much I’ve given SNAP,” Anderson told me, “or how much I have made or lost. I don’t focus on my own money … I’m committed to the same goals and purposes as SNAP. I help them do their advocacy because they help support our survivors in recovery and deliver a message in the court of public opinion. In these parallel universes our goals intersect. If they were another nonprofit, I’d do the same thing. It’s evolved into a loose collaboration.”

Anderson had several times pushed his bank credit limit to the brink for the heavy costs in investigations and travel, and to lobby legislatures to open state laws on the time frame allowing victims to sue. Bishops attacked such legislation, arguing it would bankrupt their dioceses; defense lawyers accused Anderson of self-enrichment strategies. He had a gladiatorial approach. “From the New Deal to civil rights, the bishops were allied with social justice,” he continued. “Now they’re allied with the Republican Party, the insurance industry and U.S. Chamber of Commerce in trying to shut down legislative reform”—meaning laws to extend the statutes of limitations. Insurance companies paid heavily in many church settlements, though dioceses since the 1990s had resorted to self-insurance risk pools. Closing parishes to fund settlements, in his view, was a dodge: the church could raise funds to resolve these cases.

“When a bishop testifies at a committee hearing, the politicians imagine 235,000 Catholic voters. Then the insurance representatives come in and they worry about rates going up. The Chamber of Commerce says these cases will kill business. Martin Luther King said the moral arc of time bends toward truth and justice. I see us trending toward greater awareness with attention on the Vatican.”

His wife had a point: it was never really about the money. Battling the church was more about Jeff. He enjoyed what wealth brought—the vacation home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado; the elegantly appointed Rivertown Inn with the wraparound porch and Victorian porticoes he and Julie had renovated just up the street in Stillwater; the collection of religious art he had acquired in a spiritual awakening. But money was more of a means, a weapon to batter corrupted power. “You have to be kind of nuts, or willing to take an