Great job by Pennsylvania Grand Jury in documenting serious accusations of child sex abuse by Catholic church priests in Pennsylvania, USA; Will help in preventing future such abuse worldwide
Warning: This post touches upon a very sensitive topic of child sexual abuse. Readers who prefer not to read about such matters may please skip reading the rest of this post.
As a devout and strong believer in God and a strong supporter of peaceful and ethical organized religious communities of various religions like Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc., I think that one of the biggest problems of organized religious communities today, is sexual abuse, both child and adult sexual abuse. I think no particular religion is free from this problem. Sexual abuse cases, at least adult sexual abuse cases, investigated by the police involving few Hindu, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist spiritual community leaders across the world, have been reported in this early 21st century period, with court convictions in some cases.
We cannot escape from this reality by pretending that it is not there. I think the solution lies in ensuring mechanisms that report any cases of sexual abuse by spiritual leaders/priests of children or adults under their power and control to the police authorities. Spiritual leaders/priests of such communities should be terrified of being publicly exposed for any such sexual abuse actions they indulge in, and being jailed. It is such fear that will act as a great mechanism to ****prevent**** such sexual abuse by spiritual leaders/priests.
Now consensual sex with adults indulged in by spiritual leaders/priests who claim to be celibate is a different matter, in my considered view. Such cases are about sexual hypocrisy. They are not criminal acts in many countries of the world including India. I think such sexual hypocrisy should be handled by the concerned spiritual community themselves. Now I should also state that, in my considered view, for a spiritual leader/priest or even a spiritual aspirant, sexual hypocrisy is unethical and bad spiritual behaviour which is indicative of spiritual darkness and ignorance in the concerned person, rather than evolved and enlightened spiritual behaviour.
Some may disagree with my above views on consensual sex with adults by spiritual leaders/priests who claim to be celibate. That's fine by me. They are entitled to their view.
I think the Pennsylvania, USA Grand Jury report (over a thousand pages) mentioned below is a very useful contribution towards tackling the sexual abuse by religious/spiritual community leaders/priests problem. However, I think that this report is something of a citizen group created report under guidance of Pennsylvania Attorney General and his office. It is NOT a court judgement. Persons mentioned as child sex abusers (perpetrators) should be viewed as accused and NOT as convicted of child sex abuse, unless a court of law has judged them as such. But the accusations have to be viewed as serious accusations made by the Grand Jury and NOT be casually dismissed away as false rumours.
Here is the associated video: Pa. attorney general announces findings of grand jury report on Catholic Church sex abuse, (event starts around 55 mins 28 seconds into the video) https://youtu.be/hLO_G0U9d3o?t=3328, Live Streamed by Washington Post on 14th Aug. 2018. The youtube description says, "The Pennsylvania Supreme Court released a sweeping grand jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church, listing more than 300 accused clergy and detailing 70 years of misconduct." It also has a link to this Washington Post article: More than 300 accused priests listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/08/14/pennsylvania-grand-jury-report-on-sex-abuse-in-catholic-church-will-list-hundreds-of-accused-predator-priests/ dated 14th Aug. 2018.
Around 1 hr 2 mins, Pennsylvania Attorney General (AG) Josh Shapiro says, "Good afternoon. Josh Shapiro, honoured to serve as Pennsylvania's Attorney General. And I am here finally to announce the results of a 2 year Grand Jury investigaton into widespread sexual abuse of children within the Catholic church and the systematic cover-up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican. The investigaton involved dozens of dedicated teammates, agents and lawyers of mine in the office of Attorney General. Their commitment, knowhow and compassion is truly inspiring.
...
Over the last several months, an intense legal battle has played out between my office and individuals who have concealed their identities through sealed court filings. These petitioners, and for a time, some of the dioceses, sought to prevent the entire report from ever seeing the light of day. In effect, they wanted to cover-up the cover-up. They sought to do the same thing that senior church leaders in the dioceses we investigated, have done for decades. Bury the sexual abuse by priests upon children. And cover it up for ever. Shameful! These petitioners still don't have the courage to tell the public who they are.
Moments ago, an 884 page report, issued unanimously by the 40th statewide investigative Grand Jury - the largest, most comprehensive report into child sexual abuse within the Catholic church ever produced in the United States - was released.
It builds on the Boston Globe's Spotlight report which identified 229 abuser priests, the 2005 Philadelphia Grand Jury report into the archdiocese which identified over 60 abuser priests and the 2016 ... investigation conducted by the office of the Attorney General which named at least 50 abuser priests.
The report published today in accordance with the July 27th Pennsylvania Supreme Court order has some redactions. Let me be very clear. My office is not satisfied with the release of a redacted report. Every redaction represents an incomplete story of an abuse that deserves to be told. We have an oral argument scheduled in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for September the 26th. And you can be certain that we will fight vigorously to remove every redaction and tell every story of abuse and expose every cover-up.
...
Today Pennsylvanians can learn the extent of sexual abuse in these dioceses and, for the first time, we can begin to understand the systematic cover-up by church leaders that followed.
As the members of the Grand Jury wrote in their report, "We need you to hear this. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere."
This lengthy report was written by 23 committed Grand Jurors based on extensive testimony and documentation. It goes into great detail about widespread sexual abuse and cover-up within the Catholic Church.
-----
Around 1 hr 43 mins 45 seconds, Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro says, "In just the past 12 months, our prosecutors have filed charges involving child sexual abuse against a police chief, a deputy county coroner, a paediatrician and university officials. We also have many active investigations across the commonwealth. The time for institutions to place their own interests above protecting our children is over. I will not tolerate it. To that end, our investigaton on child sexual abuse within the Catholic church remains ongoing. If you are listening to this news conference and you know of sexual abuse by a priest or member of clergy against yourself or anyone else, please call us. Our special clergy abuse hotline is 888-538-8541.
Words cannot adequately describe these horrors. But the grand jurors, my team of prosecutors and agents and professionals, and these survivors reveal a clear picture of abuse and cover-up. These predator priests were allowed to thrive in darkness for decades. But sunshine is a powerful disinfectant.
There were two primary goals outlined by the grand jurors. To disclose the abuse and to ensure that it never happens again. The abuse and cover-up is now publicly disclosed for the people of Pennsylvania to read for themselves. Critical question now is whether elected representatives and church officials will actually listen."
----
Here is a New York Times article on the matter: Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-church-sex-abuse-pennsylvania.html, dated 14th August 2018. The article also has the link to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report (1356 pages, 78.21 MB), https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/163-grand-jury-report-on-catholic/0cd27c9ad02aee539650/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 .
I downloaded the Grand Jury report (from another link) and have read the Introduction section (Report page number 1 to 12; PDF page number 4 to 15).
I have given below some extracts from this Introduction section, with some descriptions in this Introduction section being very graphic (so readers who can't handle such stuff should stop reading this post ****now****):
We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.
We were given the job of investigating child sex abuse in six dioceses - every diocese in the state except Philadelphia and Altoona -Johnstown, which were the subject of previous grand juries. These six dioceses account for 54 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. We heard the testimony of dozens of witnesses concerning clergy sex abuse. We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million pages of internal diocesan documents. They contained credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church's own records. We believe that the real number - of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward - is in the thousands.
Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent. Some were manipulated with alcohol or pornography. Some were made to masturbate their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally. But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all
As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted. But that is not to say there are no more predators. This grand jury has issued presentments against a priest in the Greensburg diocese and a priest in the Erie Diocese, who has been sexually assaulting children within the last decade. We learned of these abusers directly from their dioceses - which we hope is a sign that the church is finally changing its ways. And there may be more indictments in the future; investigation continues.
But we are not satisfied by the few charges we can bring, which represent only a tiny percentage of all the child abusers we saw. We are sick over all the crimes that will go unpunished and uncompensated. This report is our only recourse. We are going to name their names, and describe what they did - both the sex offenders and those who concealed them. We are going to shine a light on their conduct, because that is what the victims deserve. And we are going to make our recommendations for how the laws should change so that maybe no one will have to conduct another inquiry like this one. We hereby exercise our historical and statutory right as grand jurors to inform the public of our findings.
This introduction will briefly describe the sections of the report that follow. We know it is
very long. But the only way to fix these problems is to appreciate their scope.
The dioceses
This section of the report addresses each diocese individually, through two or more case studies that provide examples of the abuse that occurred and the manner in which diocesan leaders "managed" it. While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same. The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid "scandal." That is not our word, but theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered. Abuse complaints were kept locked up in a "secret archive." That is not our word, but theirs; the church's Code of Canon Law specifically requires the diocese to maintain such an archive. Only the bishop can have the key.
The strategies were so common that they were susceptible to behavioral analysis by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For our benefit, the FBI agreed to assign members of its National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime to review a significant portion of the evidence received by the grand jury. Special agents testified before us that they had identified a series of practices that regularly appeared, in various configurations, in the diocesan files they had analyzed. It's like a playbook for concealing the truth:
First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say "rape"; say "inappropriate contact" or "boundary issues."
Second, don't conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel. Instead, assign fellow clergy members to ask inadequate questions and then make credibility determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work.
Third, for an appearance of integrity, send priests for "evaluation" at church -run psychiatric treatment centers. Allow these experts to "diagnose" whether the priest was a pedophile, based largely on the priest's "self -reports," and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child.
Fourth, when a priest does have to be removed, don't say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on "sick leave," or suffering from "nervous exhaustion." Or say nothing at all.
Fifth, even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses, although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults.
Sixth, if a predator's conduct becomes known to the community, don't remove him from the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser.
Finally and above all, don't tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don't treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, "in house."
...
In the Diocese of Allentown, for example, documents show that a priest was confronted about an abuse complaint. He admitted, "Please help me. I sexually molested a boy." The diocese concluded that "the experience will not necessarily be a horrendous trauma" for the victim, and that the family should just be given "an opportunity to ventilate." The priest was left in unrestricted ministry for several more years, despite his own confession.
Similarly in the Diocese of Erie, despite a priest's admission to assaulting at least a dozen young boys, the bishop wrote to thank him for "all that you have done for God's people.... The Lord, who sees in private, will reward." Another priest confessed to anal and oral rape of at least 15 boys, as young as seven years old. The bishop later met with the abuser to commend him as "a person of candor and sincerity," and to compliment him "for the progress he has made" in controlling his "addiction." When the abuser was finally removed from the priesthood years later, the bishop ordered the parish not to say why; "nothing else need be noted."
In the Diocese of Greensburg, a priest impregnated a 17 -year -old, forged the head pastor's signature on a marriage certificate, then divorced the girl months later. Despite having sex with a minor, despite fathering a child, despite being married and being divorced, the priest was permitted to stay in ministry thanks to the diocese's efforts to find a "benevolent bishop" in another state willing to take him on. Another priest, grooming his middle school students for oral sex, taught them how Mary had to "bite off the cord" and "lick" Jesus clean after he was born. It took another 15 years, and numerous additional reports of abuse, before the diocese finally removed the priest from ministry.
A priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg abused five sisters in a single family, despite prior reports that were never acted on. In addition to sex acts, the priest collected samples of the girls' urine, pubic hair, and menstrual blood. Eventually, his house was searched and his collection was found. Without that kind of incontrovertible evidence, apparently, the diocese remained unwilling to err on the side of children even in the face of multiple reports of abuse. As a high-ranking official said about one suspect priest: "At this point we are at impasse - allegations and no admission." Years later, the abuser did admit what he had done, but by then it was too late.
...
We know that the bulk of the discussion in this report concerns events that occurred before the early 2000's. That is simply because the bulk of the material we received from the dioceses concerned those events. The information in these documents was previously kept hidden from those whom it most affected. It is exposed now only because of the existence of this grand jury.
That historical record is highly important, for present and future purposes. The thousands of victims of clergy child sex abuse in Pennsylvania deserve an accounting, to use as best they can to try to move on with their lives. And the citizens of Pennsylvania deserve an accounting as well, to help determine how best to make appropriate improvements in the law.
...
We know that child abuse in the church has not yet disappeared, because we are charging two priests, in two different dioceses, with crimes that fall within the statute of limitations. One of these priests ejaculated in the mouth of a seven -year -old.
The other assaulted two different boys, on a monthly basis, for a period of years that ended only in 2010.
And we know there might be many additional recent victims, who have not yet developed the resources to come forward either to police or to the church. As we have learned from the experiences of the victims who we saw, it takes time. We hope this report will encourage others to speak.
What we can say, though, is that despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.
Recommendations
Grand jurors are just regular people who are randomly selected for service. We don't get paid much, the hours are bad, and the work can be heartbreaking. What makes it worthwhile is knowing we can do some kind of justice. We spent 24 months dredging up the most depraved behavior, only to find that the laws protect most of its perpetrators, and leave its victims with nothing. We say laws that do that need to change.
First, we ask the Pennsylvania legislature to stop shielding child sexual predators behind the criminal statute of limitations. Thanks to a recent amendment, the current law permits victims to come forward until age 50. That's better than it was before, but still not good enough; we should just get rid of it. We heard from plenty of victims who are now in their 50's, 60's, 70's, and even one who was 83 years old. We want future victims to know they will always have the force of the criminal law behind them, no matter how long they live. And we want future child predators to know they should always be looking over their shoulder - no matter how long they live.
...
This final section of the report is possibly the most important. It contains profiles of more than 300 clergy members, from all six dioceses we investigated. By comparison, estimates of the number of abusive priests identified since 2002 in the Boston, Massachusetts archdiocese range from about 150 to 250. The 2005 Philadelphia archdiocese grand jury report identified over 60 priests. The 2016 Altoona -Johnstown report named about 50 abusers. We believe ours is the largest grand jury report of its kind to date.
...
Even out of these hundreds of odious stories, some stood out. There was the priest, for example, who raped a seven -year -old girl - while he was visiting her in the hospital after she'd had her tonsils out. Or the priest who made a nine -year -old give him oral sex, then rinsed out the boy's mouth with holy water to purify him. Or the boy who drank some juice at his priest's house, and woke up the next morning bleeding from his rectum, unable to remember anything from the night before. Or the priest, a registered psychologist, who "treated" a young parishioner with depression by attempting to hypnotize her and directing her to take off her clothes, piece by piece.
One priest was willing to admit to molesting boys, but denied reports from two girls who had been abused; "they don't have a penis," he explained. Another priest, asked about abusing his parishioners, refused to commit "with my history," he said, "anything is possible." Yet another priest finally decided to quit after years of child abuse complaints, but asked for, and received, a letter of reference for his next job - at Walt Disney World.
...
Many of the priests who we profile here are dead. We decided it was crucial to include them anyway, because we suspect that many of their victims may still be alive - including unreported victims who may have thought they were the only one. Those victims deserve to know they were not alone. It was not their fault.
We need to end with this note. During our deliberations, one of the victims who had appeared before us tried to kill herself. From her hospital bed, she asked for one thing: that we finish our work and tell the world what really happened. We feel a debt to this woman, and to the many other victims who so exposed themselves by giving us their stories. We hope this report will make good on what we owe.
--- end extracts from Introduction section of Pennsylvania Grand Juror report ---
Ravi: My initial view is that this is very useful work on very painful and difficult matters, from Pennsylvania, USA Attorney General office and the Grand Jury as well as the child sex abuse victims who spoke to them, which will help in tacking this horrible problem of child sexual abuse by religious/spiritual leaders/priests in various religious communities (not limited to Catholic Church) worldwide. As an individual spiritual aspirant and social media writer on spirituality & religion, I thank all these persons for their work.
I wish the Catholic Church all the very best in their efforts to root out this problem in their churches. I pray to Lord Jesus Christ to help genuine efforts from the Catholic Church in this regard. Cover-up is NOT the way forward. All child sex abuse allegations must be investigated properly and information on it should be fully and transparently shared with appropriate law enforcement authorities. Such an approach will win the support and confidence of the Catholic lay churchgoer community and make them feel that their children will be safe in a Catholic church environment. This applies to Catholic churches not only in Pennsylvania, USA but all over the world, including India.
Essentially, the policy should be ****PROPER INVESTIGATION and ZERO COVER-UP**** for any child sex abuse allegation in any religious community worldwide, no matter what the associated religion and sect - Catholic or Protestant Christians, Hindus, Sunni or Shia Muslims, Buddhists etc.
[I thank Pennsylvania, USA Attorney General's (AG) Office and the Grand Jury mentioned above, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above transcript extracts from AG video mentioned above and extracts from the Grand Jury report, on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
As a devout and strong believer in God and a strong supporter of peaceful and ethical organized religious communities of various religions like Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc., I think that one of the biggest problems of organized religious communities today, is sexual abuse, both child and adult sexual abuse. I think no particular religion is free from this problem. Sexual abuse cases, at least adult sexual abuse cases, investigated by the police involving few Hindu, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist spiritual community leaders across the world, have been reported in this early 21st century period, with court convictions in some cases.
We cannot escape from this reality by pretending that it is not there. I think the solution lies in ensuring mechanisms that report any cases of sexual abuse by spiritual leaders/priests of children or adults under their power and control to the police authorities. Spiritual leaders/priests of such communities should be terrified of being publicly exposed for any such sexual abuse actions they indulge in, and being jailed. It is such fear that will act as a great mechanism to ****prevent**** such sexual abuse by spiritual leaders/priests.
Now consensual sex with adults indulged in by spiritual leaders/priests who claim to be celibate is a different matter, in my considered view. Such cases are about sexual hypocrisy. They are not criminal acts in many countries of the world including India. I think such sexual hypocrisy should be handled by the concerned spiritual community themselves. Now I should also state that, in my considered view, for a spiritual leader/priest or even a spiritual aspirant, sexual hypocrisy is unethical and bad spiritual behaviour which is indicative of spiritual darkness and ignorance in the concerned person, rather than evolved and enlightened spiritual behaviour.
Some may disagree with my above views on consensual sex with adults by spiritual leaders/priests who claim to be celibate. That's fine by me. They are entitled to their view.
I think the Pennsylvania, USA Grand Jury report (over a thousand pages) mentioned below is a very useful contribution towards tackling the sexual abuse by religious/spiritual community leaders/priests problem. However, I think that this report is something of a citizen group created report under guidance of Pennsylvania Attorney General and his office. It is NOT a court judgement. Persons mentioned as child sex abusers (perpetrators) should be viewed as accused and NOT as convicted of child sex abuse, unless a court of law has judged them as such. But the accusations have to be viewed as serious accusations made by the Grand Jury and NOT be casually dismissed away as false rumours.
Here is the associated video: Pa. attorney general announces findings of grand jury report on Catholic Church sex abuse, (event starts around 55 mins 28 seconds into the video) https://youtu.be/hLO_G0U9d3o?t=3328, Live Streamed by Washington Post on 14th Aug. 2018. The youtube description says, "The Pennsylvania Supreme Court released a sweeping grand jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church, listing more than 300 accused clergy and detailing 70 years of misconduct." It also has a link to this Washington Post article: More than 300 accused priests listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/08/14/pennsylvania-grand-jury-report-on-sex-abuse-in-catholic-church-will-list-hundreds-of-accused-predator-priests/ dated 14th Aug. 2018.
Around 1 hr 2 mins, Pennsylvania Attorney General (AG) Josh Shapiro says, "Good afternoon. Josh Shapiro, honoured to serve as Pennsylvania's Attorney General. And I am here finally to announce the results of a 2 year Grand Jury investigaton into widespread sexual abuse of children within the Catholic church and the systematic cover-up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican. The investigaton involved dozens of dedicated teammates, agents and lawyers of mine in the office of Attorney General. Their commitment, knowhow and compassion is truly inspiring.
...
Over the last several months, an intense legal battle has played out between my office and individuals who have concealed their identities through sealed court filings. These petitioners, and for a time, some of the dioceses, sought to prevent the entire report from ever seeing the light of day. In effect, they wanted to cover-up the cover-up. They sought to do the same thing that senior church leaders in the dioceses we investigated, have done for decades. Bury the sexual abuse by priests upon children. And cover it up for ever. Shameful! These petitioners still don't have the courage to tell the public who they are.
Moments ago, an 884 page report, issued unanimously by the 40th statewide investigative Grand Jury - the largest, most comprehensive report into child sexual abuse within the Catholic church ever produced in the United States - was released.
It builds on the Boston Globe's Spotlight report which identified 229 abuser priests, the 2005 Philadelphia Grand Jury report into the archdiocese which identified over 60 abuser priests and the 2016 ... investigation conducted by the office of the Attorney General which named at least 50 abuser priests.
The report published today in accordance with the July 27th Pennsylvania Supreme Court order has some redactions. Let me be very clear. My office is not satisfied with the release of a redacted report. Every redaction represents an incomplete story of an abuse that deserves to be told. We have an oral argument scheduled in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for September the 26th. And you can be certain that we will fight vigorously to remove every redaction and tell every story of abuse and expose every cover-up.
...
Today Pennsylvanians can learn the extent of sexual abuse in these dioceses and, for the first time, we can begin to understand the systematic cover-up by church leaders that followed.
As the members of the Grand Jury wrote in their report, "We need you to hear this. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere."
This lengthy report was written by 23 committed Grand Jurors based on extensive testimony and documentation. It goes into great detail about widespread sexual abuse and cover-up within the Catholic Church.
-----
Around 1 hr 43 mins 45 seconds, Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro says, "In just the past 12 months, our prosecutors have filed charges involving child sexual abuse against a police chief, a deputy county coroner, a paediatrician and university officials. We also have many active investigations across the commonwealth. The time for institutions to place their own interests above protecting our children is over. I will not tolerate it. To that end, our investigaton on child sexual abuse within the Catholic church remains ongoing. If you are listening to this news conference and you know of sexual abuse by a priest or member of clergy against yourself or anyone else, please call us. Our special clergy abuse hotline is 888-538-8541.
Words cannot adequately describe these horrors. But the grand jurors, my team of prosecutors and agents and professionals, and these survivors reveal a clear picture of abuse and cover-up. These predator priests were allowed to thrive in darkness for decades. But sunshine is a powerful disinfectant.
There were two primary goals outlined by the grand jurors. To disclose the abuse and to ensure that it never happens again. The abuse and cover-up is now publicly disclosed for the people of Pennsylvania to read for themselves. Critical question now is whether elected representatives and church officials will actually listen."
----
Here is a New York Times article on the matter: Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-church-sex-abuse-pennsylvania.html, dated 14th August 2018. The article also has the link to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report (1356 pages, 78.21 MB), https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/163-grand-jury-report-on-catholic/0cd27c9ad02aee539650/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 .
I downloaded the Grand Jury report (from another link) and have read the Introduction section (Report page number 1 to 12; PDF page number 4 to 15).
I have given below some extracts from this Introduction section, with some descriptions in this Introduction section being very graphic (so readers who can't handle such stuff should stop reading this post ****now****):
We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.
We were given the job of investigating child sex abuse in six dioceses - every diocese in the state except Philadelphia and Altoona -Johnstown, which were the subject of previous grand juries. These six dioceses account for 54 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. We heard the testimony of dozens of witnesses concerning clergy sex abuse. We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million pages of internal diocesan documents. They contained credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church's own records. We believe that the real number - of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward - is in the thousands.
Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent. Some were manipulated with alcohol or pornography. Some were made to masturbate their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally. But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all
As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted. But that is not to say there are no more predators. This grand jury has issued presentments against a priest in the Greensburg diocese and a priest in the Erie Diocese, who has been sexually assaulting children within the last decade. We learned of these abusers directly from their dioceses - which we hope is a sign that the church is finally changing its ways. And there may be more indictments in the future; investigation continues.
But we are not satisfied by the few charges we can bring, which represent only a tiny percentage of all the child abusers we saw. We are sick over all the crimes that will go unpunished and uncompensated. This report is our only recourse. We are going to name their names, and describe what they did - both the sex offenders and those who concealed them. We are going to shine a light on their conduct, because that is what the victims deserve. And we are going to make our recommendations for how the laws should change so that maybe no one will have to conduct another inquiry like this one. We hereby exercise our historical and statutory right as grand jurors to inform the public of our findings.
This introduction will briefly describe the sections of the report that follow. We know it is
very long. But the only way to fix these problems is to appreciate their scope.
The dioceses
This section of the report addresses each diocese individually, through two or more case studies that provide examples of the abuse that occurred and the manner in which diocesan leaders "managed" it. While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same. The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid "scandal." That is not our word, but theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered. Abuse complaints were kept locked up in a "secret archive." That is not our word, but theirs; the church's Code of Canon Law specifically requires the diocese to maintain such an archive. Only the bishop can have the key.
The strategies were so common that they were susceptible to behavioral analysis by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For our benefit, the FBI agreed to assign members of its National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime to review a significant portion of the evidence received by the grand jury. Special agents testified before us that they had identified a series of practices that regularly appeared, in various configurations, in the diocesan files they had analyzed. It's like a playbook for concealing the truth:
First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say "rape"; say "inappropriate contact" or "boundary issues."
Second, don't conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel. Instead, assign fellow clergy members to ask inadequate questions and then make credibility determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work.
Third, for an appearance of integrity, send priests for "evaluation" at church -run psychiatric treatment centers. Allow these experts to "diagnose" whether the priest was a pedophile, based largely on the priest's "self -reports," and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child.
Fourth, when a priest does have to be removed, don't say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on "sick leave," or suffering from "nervous exhaustion." Or say nothing at all.
Fifth, even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses, although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults.
Sixth, if a predator's conduct becomes known to the community, don't remove him from the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser.
Finally and above all, don't tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don't treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, "in house."
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In the Diocese of Allentown, for example, documents show that a priest was confronted about an abuse complaint. He admitted, "Please help me. I sexually molested a boy." The diocese concluded that "the experience will not necessarily be a horrendous trauma" for the victim, and that the family should just be given "an opportunity to ventilate." The priest was left in unrestricted ministry for several more years, despite his own confession.
Similarly in the Diocese of Erie, despite a priest's admission to assaulting at least a dozen young boys, the bishop wrote to thank him for "all that you have done for God's people.... The Lord, who sees in private, will reward." Another priest confessed to anal and oral rape of at least 15 boys, as young as seven years old. The bishop later met with the abuser to commend him as "a person of candor and sincerity," and to compliment him "for the progress he has made" in controlling his "addiction." When the abuser was finally removed from the priesthood years later, the bishop ordered the parish not to say why; "nothing else need be noted."
In the Diocese of Greensburg, a priest impregnated a 17 -year -old, forged the head pastor's signature on a marriage certificate, then divorced the girl months later. Despite having sex with a minor, despite fathering a child, despite being married and being divorced, the priest was permitted to stay in ministry thanks to the diocese's efforts to find a "benevolent bishop" in another state willing to take him on. Another priest, grooming his middle school students for oral sex, taught them how Mary had to "bite off the cord" and "lick" Jesus clean after he was born. It took another 15 years, and numerous additional reports of abuse, before the diocese finally removed the priest from ministry.
A priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg abused five sisters in a single family, despite prior reports that were never acted on. In addition to sex acts, the priest collected samples of the girls' urine, pubic hair, and menstrual blood. Eventually, his house was searched and his collection was found. Without that kind of incontrovertible evidence, apparently, the diocese remained unwilling to err on the side of children even in the face of multiple reports of abuse. As a high-ranking official said about one suspect priest: "At this point we are at impasse - allegations and no admission." Years later, the abuser did admit what he had done, but by then it was too late.
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We know that the bulk of the discussion in this report concerns events that occurred before the early 2000's. That is simply because the bulk of the material we received from the dioceses concerned those events. The information in these documents was previously kept hidden from those whom it most affected. It is exposed now only because of the existence of this grand jury.
That historical record is highly important, for present and future purposes. The thousands of victims of clergy child sex abuse in Pennsylvania deserve an accounting, to use as best they can to try to move on with their lives. And the citizens of Pennsylvania deserve an accounting as well, to help determine how best to make appropriate improvements in the law.
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We know that child abuse in the church has not yet disappeared, because we are charging two priests, in two different dioceses, with crimes that fall within the statute of limitations. One of these priests ejaculated in the mouth of a seven -year -old.
The other assaulted two different boys, on a monthly basis, for a period of years that ended only in 2010.
And we know there might be many additional recent victims, who have not yet developed the resources to come forward either to police or to the church. As we have learned from the experiences of the victims who we saw, it takes time. We hope this report will encourage others to speak.
What we can say, though, is that despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.
Recommendations
Grand jurors are just regular people who are randomly selected for service. We don't get paid much, the hours are bad, and the work can be heartbreaking. What makes it worthwhile is knowing we can do some kind of justice. We spent 24 months dredging up the most depraved behavior, only to find that the laws protect most of its perpetrators, and leave its victims with nothing. We say laws that do that need to change.
First, we ask the Pennsylvania legislature to stop shielding child sexual predators behind the criminal statute of limitations. Thanks to a recent amendment, the current law permits victims to come forward until age 50. That's better than it was before, but still not good enough; we should just get rid of it. We heard from plenty of victims who are now in their 50's, 60's, 70's, and even one who was 83 years old. We want future victims to know they will always have the force of the criminal law behind them, no matter how long they live. And we want future child predators to know they should always be looking over their shoulder - no matter how long they live.
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This final section of the report is possibly the most important. It contains profiles of more than 300 clergy members, from all six dioceses we investigated. By comparison, estimates of the number of abusive priests identified since 2002 in the Boston, Massachusetts archdiocese range from about 150 to 250. The 2005 Philadelphia archdiocese grand jury report identified over 60 priests. The 2016 Altoona -Johnstown report named about 50 abusers. We believe ours is the largest grand jury report of its kind to date.
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Even out of these hundreds of odious stories, some stood out. There was the priest, for example, who raped a seven -year -old girl - while he was visiting her in the hospital after she'd had her tonsils out. Or the priest who made a nine -year -old give him oral sex, then rinsed out the boy's mouth with holy water to purify him. Or the boy who drank some juice at his priest's house, and woke up the next morning bleeding from his rectum, unable to remember anything from the night before. Or the priest, a registered psychologist, who "treated" a young parishioner with depression by attempting to hypnotize her and directing her to take off her clothes, piece by piece.
One priest was willing to admit to molesting boys, but denied reports from two girls who had been abused; "they don't have a penis," he explained. Another priest, asked about abusing his parishioners, refused to commit "with my history," he said, "anything is possible." Yet another priest finally decided to quit after years of child abuse complaints, but asked for, and received, a letter of reference for his next job - at Walt Disney World.
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Many of the priests who we profile here are dead. We decided it was crucial to include them anyway, because we suspect that many of their victims may still be alive - including unreported victims who may have thought they were the only one. Those victims deserve to know they were not alone. It was not their fault.
We need to end with this note. During our deliberations, one of the victims who had appeared before us tried to kill herself. From her hospital bed, she asked for one thing: that we finish our work and tell the world what really happened. We feel a debt to this woman, and to the many other victims who so exposed themselves by giving us their stories. We hope this report will make good on what we owe.
--- end extracts from Introduction section of Pennsylvania Grand Juror report ---
Ravi: My initial view is that this is very useful work on very painful and difficult matters, from Pennsylvania, USA Attorney General office and the Grand Jury as well as the child sex abuse victims who spoke to them, which will help in tacking this horrible problem of child sexual abuse by religious/spiritual leaders/priests in various religious communities (not limited to Catholic Church) worldwide. As an individual spiritual aspirant and social media writer on spirituality & religion, I thank all these persons for their work.
I wish the Catholic Church all the very best in their efforts to root out this problem in their churches. I pray to Lord Jesus Christ to help genuine efforts from the Catholic Church in this regard. Cover-up is NOT the way forward. All child sex abuse allegations must be investigated properly and information on it should be fully and transparently shared with appropriate law enforcement authorities. Such an approach will win the support and confidence of the Catholic lay churchgoer community and make them feel that their children will be safe in a Catholic church environment. This applies to Catholic churches not only in Pennsylvania, USA but all over the world, including India.
Essentially, the policy should be ****PROPER INVESTIGATION and ZERO COVER-UP**** for any child sex abuse allegation in any religious community worldwide, no matter what the associated religion and sect - Catholic or Protestant Christians, Hindus, Sunni or Shia Muslims, Buddhists etc.
[I thank Pennsylvania, USA Attorney General's (AG) Office and the Grand Jury mentioned above, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above transcript extracts from AG video mentioned above and extracts from the Grand Jury report, on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
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