Morganelli seeks release of diocesan sex abuse report from grand jury

By Tim Darragh
Morning Call
July 09, 2018

http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-nws-morganelli-grand-jury-report-20180709-story.html

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli is calling on the state District Attorney’s Association to petition for the release of a two-year state grand jury investigation into sexual abuse by priests and others in six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses, including Allentown.

The Supreme Court on June 20 blocked the report’s release, which was expected at the end of June.

The court’s order came after about two dozen unnamed people, including current and former clergy, challenged the release, arguing that naming people who have not been charged with crimes would damage their reputations in violation of the state constitution. The challenge also questioned whether the report adheres to the grand jury law.

In a news conference Monday, Morganelli said those filings put the grand jury process under assault and if they’re successful, would wipe out the grand jury as a corruption-fighting tool.

“The petitioners’ demands in these cases would essentially eradicate the grand jury report as an instrument of accountability for public and private institutions,” Morganelli said.

In their briefs, the unnamed petitioners raised fundamental questions about the grand jury process, including whether naming a person criticized, but not criminally charged, is constitutional; whether a supervising judge has the ability to edit a grand jury’s report; whether the Grand Jury Act violates the right to due process; and whether individuals have the right to cross-examine witnesses before a grand jury, he said.

Grand juries, Morganelli noted, have played “a vital role in highlighting important issues” such as waste and abuse at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s abortion center in Philadelphia and the incinerator project that devastated Harrisburg’s finances.

Lawyers for nine news organizations — including The Morning Call — countered the unnamed clergy’s argument in court papers last week, saying state law requires public release of the report.

Siding with the media outlets, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a court filing last week, “Hundreds of victims, thousands of parishioners and many members of the community are awaiting the report. The longer it is held, the greater the risk of undermining public confidence in the judicial system.”

The state’s highest court ordered lawyers for both sides to lay out their arguments in briefs this week.

Morganelli also said Monday that his office has an active investigation into the activities of an Allentown Diocese priest, which came after a lawsuit was filed against a priest in Bath. He did not name the priest.

The Allentown Diocese removed from ministry Monsignor Francis Nave, pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Bath, after a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia on June 26 alleged that Nave encouraged a 16-year-old he was counseling via online video to take his clothes off and perform sex acts, beginning in 2011.

Morganelli said he did not contact the Allentown Diocese about the grand jury report.

Morganelli, a past president of the District Attorneys Association, suggested an emergency meeting of the organization to pressure the Supreme Court to release the grand jury report.

Richard W. Long, executive director of the association, said the organization would need around 48 hours to decide what action, if any, it should take.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin has no plans to take action on the grand jury report, a spokeswoman said.

Morganelli said the process worked well in 2016 when a grand jury detailing allegations of sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnston Diocese was made public, revealing claims against about 50 priests and an alleged cover-up by church officials.

Five years before that, the second of two grand juries investigating the Philadelphia Archdiocese concluded, uncovering unreported sexual abuse allegations against more than 60 priests.

Those two dioceses were the only two excluded from the current investigation, which covers Allentown as well as the Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton dioceses.

In 2002, Morganelli joined district attorneys from the five counties comprising the Allentown Diocese — Lehigh, Berks, Carbon, Northampton and Schuylkill —in reviewing reviewed diocesan files, amid an international sex abuse scandal in the church. All of the abuses cases found in those filed had exceeded the statute of limitations by that time, the district attorneys said then.

Morganelli is fresh off a similar fight for disclosure. Earlier this year, he successfully countered the Pennsylvania State Police’s attempt to suppress a Northampton County grand jury report critical of the state police’s handling of an investigation into the 2017 shooting death of a Lower Mount Bethel Township individual by two troopers.

The fight to make the report public also involves victims. In a filing last week, a Lancaster County man who said he was molested by a Harrisburg Diocese priest in the 1980s, said in a court petition that keeping the report secret has added to victims’s trauma.

“The emotional trauma of being silenced as a youth is now exacerbated by the [Supreme] Court’s June 20 order, which replicates and continues that silencing,” Todd Frey said in the filing.

In addition to The Morning Call, the media groups petitioning for the release are: The Associated Press; LNP Media Group in Lancaster; Philadelphia Media Network, which publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News; NBC Philadelphia affiliate WCAU-TV: PG Publishing Co., which publishes the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; PA Media Group, which publishes The Patriot-News in Harrisburg; Telemundo Mid-Atlantic; and Philadelphia public broadcaster WHYY Inc.