Church leaders protected more than 300 “predatory priests” in six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania for decades because they were more interested in protecting the Church and abusers than caring for their victims, according to a scathing grand jury report released Tuesday.
More than 1,000 young victims were identifiable from church records, the report said.
“The main thing was not to help the children, but to avoid scandal,” the report said. “Priests were raping little boys and girls and the men of God who were responsible not only did nothing: they hid everything.”
The redacted report details the latest in a decades-long string of abuse and protection allegations leveled against the church across the country and around the world. Last month, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a prominent Vatican official, amid allegations of sexual abuse nearly 40 years ago.
The Pennsylvania report accuses the state’s religious leaders of discouraging victims from reporting the abuse, which is believed to have lasted more than 60 years.
“Several diocesan administrators, including bishops, often dissuaded victims from reporting abuse to the police, pressured law enforcement to end or avoid an investigation, or conducted their own flawed and biased investigation without reporting crimes against children to the appropriate authorities,” the report said.
Some of the defendants are deceased and statute of limitations laws prevent many others from facing criminal charges. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the statute of limitations was a key tool in the “systematic cover-up” by senior Church officials in Pennsylvania and the Vatican.
“The longer they concealed, the less law enforcement could prosecute these predators because the statute of limitations would run,” Shapiro said at a Harrisburg news conference. “Nearly all of the (grand jury) child abuse cases uncovered were too old to prosecute.”
The grand jury made submissions against two priests. One pleaded guilty last month to charges of sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy more than 20 years ago. Another was charged with child sex crimes.
The grand jury compiled the information during a two-year investigation. Shapiro called the report “an honest and comprehensive account of widespread sexual abuse” in the dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton that care for more than 1.7 million Catholics.
After:Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg Names Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse
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Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered the document released, but appointed a county judge to negotiate the amount that would be hidden from the public. Some current and former priests who deny the allegations have fought to have their names redacted.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years until 2006, is among those named in the report as having failed to stop the attackers. Wuerl, who is archbishop of Washington, sent a letter to Washington priests defending his efforts on behalf of victims and calling for a “zero tolerance policy” for clergy abuse, the Associated Press reported.
“It pushed me to not only address these acts, but to be fully engaged, to meet with survivors and their families, and to do what I could to comfort them and try to begin a healing process,” wrote Wuerl.
Last week, the Diocese of Erie released a list of more than 60 people “credibly accused” of actions the diocese says disqualified them from working with children. Bishop Lawrence Persico said this week in a letter preparing parishioners for the grand jury report that it was “shocking to read the graphic details” of the abuse allegations.
“The most important thing I want to do right now is express my grief to the victims of sexual abuse that occurred in the Diocese of Erie,” Persico wrote. “They suffered cruel behavior from the very people who should have had the greatest interest in protecting them.”
This month, the Diocese of Harrisburg identified 71 priests and other church members accused of child sexual abuse.
“This conduct left a legacy of pain and sorrow that is still felt,” Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer wrote in a letter to the diocese. “I apologize for these actions.”
Gainer announced sweeping changes to privacy policies and removed the names of bishops and others associated with the abuse from any place of honor in the diocese.
Previous grand jury investigations have revealed widespread abuses in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.
Sex abuse scandals have rocked the Roman Catholic Church for decades, not just in the United States but around the world. Courts and prosecutors have filed indictments and sued for damages in an attempt to hold the church accountable for the abuse crisis.
Several high-ranking clergy, including Australia’s top Roman Catholic cleric, have gone to jail or been sentenced to house arrest.
The scandals hit the church hard financially, and many dioceses paid millions in compensation to the victims. In June, the Roman Catholic Church of Rochester revealed that it had paid $1.6 million to at least 20 children who had been sexually abused by 24 priests since 1950.
Eighteen American dioceses and religious orders in the United States have filed for bankruptcy during the crisis, according to the website BishopAccountability.org, which tracks cases of sexual abuse.
A 19th, the Diocese of St. Cloud in Minnesota, announced in February its intention to file for bankruptcy. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said in late May it agreed to pay a $210 million settlement to 450 victims of clergy sex abuse, one of the largest payouts to the states to date. -United for the scandal.
