Susan Elzey’s accountability starts with Phil Snyder

Phil Snyder was a deacon at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia who challenged the church’s handling of sexual abuse. Tenth excommunicated him and sued him. Susan Elzey gave perjurious testimony against him. Years later, he remains divorced and burdened by legal fees, with no apology or restitution from Elzey.

Now Elzey has a website promoting accountability for abuse. Phil is still waiting for her to take her own advice when it comes to her conduct towards him.

Anglican Watch’s position is straightforward: two things can be true. Susan Elzey is an abuse victim, and she is also an abuser. We concur that she suffered clergy sexual abuse at the hands of Liam Goligher. She is entitled to care and justice for that abuse. However, she remains responsible for correcting her own behavior and repairing the harm she caused Snyder. We can also tell her, with certainty, that she will only experience limited healing until she comes clean over her own misconduct.

Her website promises truth, accountability, and reliable information about clergy abuse. Excellent. An apology and restitution to Phil would be a useful demonstration.

Accountability includes the person promoting it

Elzey committed perjury when she falsely testified that Snyder had threatened her. As we documented in our prior reporting, our finding rests on body-camera footage, the hearing transcript, third-party witness interviews, and other evidence. We stand by it.

Snyder’s account of Elzey’s conduct supplies specifics. He identifies her as “A member,” the commenter who attacked him in a January 2019 discussion at The Wartburg Watch. Those comments:

Portrayed Snyder as dishonest, psychologically unstable, and motivated by attention.
Minimized a report of sexual misconduct in the church basement as ankle touching and dismissed reports of crimes: “The problem is, the ‘crimes’ are fiction.”
Defended Goligher as someone who exposed abuse while describing Snyder’s campaign as “straight out of hell.”

All this while assuring readers that “Tenth Presbyterian Church is a place that defends the weak.” Quite a testimonial for a church she now criticizes for failing victims. Discrediting a whistleblower while shielding the institution he challenged is abusive conduct. Having suffered abuse yourself does not make it acceptable.

Snyder also details Elzey’s testimony against him and links body-camera footage that he identifies as contradicting her account. His court-document archive provides transcripts, pleadings, and his notes on the proceedings. The record is available to readers; a flattering biography does not make it disappear.

As to Elzey’s claim that she came forward about Goligher’s abuse, she conveniently omits a salient fact: She did so only after this publication exposed her prior guilty plea, and Goligher’s, for having sex in a public park in Lancaster, PA.

Elzey now publicly criticizes Tenth Presbyterian, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America, over its handling of abuse. In a November 17, 2025, report by Liam Adams in The Tennessean, which her website promotes, she described a church where abuse flourished without accountability. The report also detailed how Tenth investigated her for adultery and nearly excommunicated her after she reported clergy sexual abuse, before eventually acknowledging her as a victim.

That treatment deserves scrutiny, and Elzey deserves accountability for the abuse she suffered. Snyder deserves the same. Recognizing her victimization does not require overlooking her abusive conduct toward him, and publicly criticizing the church does not correct her claims against him.

Susan Elzey’s lies — just in case she’s forgotten. Meanwhile, we ask Elzey’s question of her: “Does she believe her own distortions?”

We do not regard Elzey as a credible voice of accountability while her own conduct toward Snyder remains unaddressed. Launching a website is considerably easier than correcting the record.

The publicity is ahead of the accountability

Elzey’s current work includes co-leading the Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse (ACSA) Survivor Coalition. As The Roys Report reported on October 6, 2026, the coalition asked Netflix to stop describing Mica Miller’s abuse as an affair. Its letter had attracted approximately 250 signatures.

Accurately naming clergy abuse is a legitimate concern. Elzey also has a responsibility to tell the truth about Snyder. Netflix is not the only party with language to correct.

Her website also promotes an Imginn News article titled “How Susan Elzey Is Pioneering Change in Survivor Support.” It credits her with influencing programs, improving support, and helping survivors heal, without identifying the programs, quoting participants, or documenting results. A remarkable amount of applause for an article that never gets around to showing its work. In other words, if that’s her idea of “pioneering change,” no thanks, she can keep it.

Meanwhile, a resource by Jaime Simpson that Elzey’s own website recommends calls for public acknowledgment of harm, formal apologies, and accountability shaped by those harmed. Useful advice. We recommend she take it.

Christian repentance requires restitution

Christian repentance requires restitution: taking responsibility and repairing the harm done, as far as possible. In Luke 19:8, Zacchaeus commits to repaying those he defrauded. The people he harmed were actually supposed to get something out of his repentance. Imagine that.

Anglican Watch is regularly in touch with Phil Snyder. He has received nothing from Elzey: no apology and no restitution. An apology would be a beginning, but words alone would not repair the damage. Helping other people does not settle the obligation to the person you harmed.

Meanwhile, Phil is still divorced. He is still dealing with legal fees caused by Elzey and her perjury. In his published account of the harm caused by Tenth, he described $65,000 in legal fees defending against the church’s lawsuit and injunction, more than his entire annual income, and said the financial stress caused his divorce. Those consequences did not disappear when Elzey launched a website, and they will not be paid off with flattering profiles.

Christianity calls for repentance and restitution. Far too often, the de facto approach is, “Well, that’s water over the dam, so we can forget about it.” That is not how repentance works. Time does not issue retractions or write restitution checks. Calling it water over the dam is convenient when someone else is still underwater.

For Elzey, repentance must include:

A direct, public apology to Snyder that identifies her conduct and accepts responsibility.
A public correction and withdrawal of the false claims against him.
Concrete efforts to repair his reputation and undo the continuing consequences of those claims.
Material restitution for losses her conduct caused, with Snyder having a voice in what repair requires.

None of this depends on Snyder offering forgiveness, reconciliation, or approval of her advocacy. Responsibility for making amends belongs to the person who caused the harm.

Neither Tenth Presbyterian nor anyone at Tenth has done anything to repair the harm the church has caused Phil Snyder. The obligation to repent and make restitution does not stop with Elzey. For an institution in the repentance business, that is quite an omission.

And if the Presbyterian Church in America wants to excommunicate Elzey for her perjury, we’re down. The commandment against bearing false witness does not come with an exception for helping the church’s lawyers.

Until Susan Elzey apologizes, corrects the record, and demonstrates repentance through restitution to Phil Snyder, Anglican Watch has zero use for her advocacy. We regard her efforts as nothing more than reputation management.

And if she is having trouble reaching Phil, we’ll be happy to put her in touch. We wouldn’t want a missing phone number to stand between Susan and repentance, especially since, being PCA, she likely believes in a literal hell. In fact, we’ll even publish her written retraction.