CORONA, CALIF. ? The leafletting outside St. Matthew Catholic Church started well on a recent Sunday, with some parishioners accepting the brochures about clergy abuse being handed out by people who said they were abused by priests.

Then one woman standing on a church balcony screamed at the demonstrators “You’re evil!” and a man made an obscene gesture at them. The parish called police, who told the protesters they couldn’t leaflet without a city permit.

The angry reaction came as no surprise to members of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. Since the sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. Roman Catholic church blew up in 2002, SNAP has often stepped forward to speak for victims.

While many victims have embraced SNAP as a support group and a means to win long-overdue justice, the group’s tactics have alienated other Catholics and even some of the very people it hopes to help.

Some abuse victims say the group is too angry and confrontational, while others insist it’s not activist enough. Still others fault SNAP for its financial relationship with clergy abuse attorneys, saying the link fuels perceptions that victims are only after the church’s money.

The question has profound significance for victims, many of whom will never see their molesters prosecuted because of statutes of limitations.

“This issue drives to the core of who you are — it’s not like anything else in the world,” said Mary Ryan, an abuse victim from Rhode Island. “It’s messy.”

SNAP was started by Chicago social worker and abuse victim Barbara Blaine in 1989 and had 1,800 members, six active chapters and an annual budget of $2,000 until early 2002, when the clergy sex abuse scandal exploded in Boston and spread across the nation. The group now has 5,000 members, 60 active chapters and an annual budget of $250,000, with five paid staff members.

The growth gave SNAP clout in the national discourse on clergy abuse.

Among other actions, SNAP has demonstrated each of the past three years outside a hotel in Washington, D.C., when bishops held their annual meetings there. Members routinely picket diocesan headquarters and leaflet churches to spread the word about abuse.

Mary Grant, who coordinates SNAP actions across Southern California, said the group’s activism had helped identify and remove molester priests. For example, she said, alleged victims of two Los Angeles priests who now face criminal investigations came forward after hearing about SNAP in the news.

“Some don’t want to be public and that’s fine,” Grant said. “But we’ve literally found thousands of victims by standing outside parishes.”

Paul Schwartz, of Wichita, Kan., attended the group’s meetings but decided he wasn’t being helped. “Every conversation I’ve ever had with SNAP is ‘Oh, we’re going to bring (the church) down. How’s that going to help me?” Schwartz said. “The Catholic church did not cause my anger and rage, the abuse did.”