The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has received a subpoena as part of a federal grand jury investigating child sexual abuse and its cover up, church officials confirmed Thursday, Oct. 18.
The subpoena “requires the production of certain documents,” said Ken Gavin, archdiocesan spokesperson, and the archdiocese “will cooperate with the United States Department of Justice in this matter.”
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The same day, the Diocese of Harrisburg released a statement saying it “will cooperate fully with this inquiry, just as it has with the Office of Attorney General’s investigation,” the statewide grand jury released its report on sexual abuse in the church last summer. “The diocese has worked to be open and transparent regarding the issue of child sexual abuse and its past.”
The Allentown Diocese also received a subpoena. In a statement, the diocese said it “sees itself as a partner with law enforcement in its goal to eliminate the abuse of minors wherever it may occur in society.”
News reports by the Associated Press say the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District, based in Philadelphia and led by William M. McSwain, had recently begun serving subpoenas in the new statewide probe.
The Catholic Church in Pennsylvania consists of eight dioceses: the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the dioceses of Allentown, Altoona-Johnstown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton.
The federal investigation follows the release Aug. 14 of a statewide grand jury report on clerical sexual abuse in the church and decisions by bishops to conceal, transfer or shield alleged abusers. The 18-month investigation under Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro uncovered sexual abuse on a vast scale, detailing some 1,000 cases of abuse by 300 priests dating back 70 years. Most of the cases took place from the 1960s through the 1980s.
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia was not part of that investigation. It had previously been investigated by a grand jury in 2005, which revealed alleged abuse by more than 60 priests over several decades, and again in 2011. The latter led to the conviction of Msgr. William Lynn, former archdiocesan vicar for clergy. He served most of his sentence before the conviction was overturned in 2016 by the state Supreme Court.
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Each grand jury report led to additional reforms in church policies for handling alleged abusers — including posting the names of credibly accused clergy on the archdiocese’s website — and to an improved response to victims of abuse.
In 2002 the archdiocese, along with most Catholic dioceses in the United States, implemented safe environment policies that mandated training of church workers and volunteers to protect children and youth, and educated children and adults appropriately to raise awareness of abuse and to make reports of suspected abuse immediately to law enforcement authorities.
Also not included in last summer’s grand jury report was the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, which was probed for clerical sexual abuse in 2016. As a result of that investigation, it too posted the names of credibly accused priests on its website. The practice was implemented in the other six dioceses only after the release in August of the statewide grand jury’s report.
The 23 jurors of that investigation culled a half-million documents and interviewed numerous people, including church workers and prelates, in producing their 884-page report. That led to only two indictments and one conviction of a priest.
Almost all the cases in the eight dioceses are time-barred from prosecution and civil action under Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitation.
Legislation to open a “window” on the statutes, which would allow retroactive civil lawsuits to be brought for up to two years, passed overwhelmingly in the state House of Representatives earlier this year.
But the state Senate did not bring the bill (S.B. 261) up for a vote Oct. 17, the last day of the chamber’s session. The bill effectively is dead at this time as the Pennsylvania legislative session has ended.
The bill’s opponents, including church leaders and some senators, have claimed that a window allowing lawsuits looking decades into the past against perpetrators who may be dead by now is unjust, possibly unconstitutional and would lead to the bankruptcy of Catholic dioceses.
Three weeks ago, Catholic bishops in the state pledged to establish an independent fund to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse, a plan supported at the time by state Sen. Joe Scarnati, who opposed S.B. 261’s provision for retroactive lawsuits.
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Children are not the concern of the victims, the grand juries, or the U.S. Justice Department. The victims are adults with lawyers. The governmental bodies, tools of one-sided district attorneys, are prejudicial to the Catholic Church. The events have been driven not by fairness and honesty, but by the media, notably the Philadelphia Inquirer, a rag of yellow journalism. To make Catholics fearful of expressing their demonstrated love the Catholic Church, the enemies of the Church do all that they can to staunch expression of the continuing strong support of all priests.
Emma, You have said it well! Thank you for your comment..
Another grand jury is suspicious of religious bigotry . The state of PA did an exhaustive investigation.
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia will not agree to implement a policy of parental notification if a child or young person is the victim of a boundary violation by Church personnel. Why no parental notification? Why keep information concerning child safety from parents?