Church Lobbying Efforts Inappropriate

Daily Item
June 15, 2019

https://www.dailyitem.com/opinion/church-lobbying-efforts-inappropriate/article_037e42e9-97ab-5a1e-be2a-78a44815cc0f.html

The U.S. Catholic Bishops establishing their own hotline for reporting sexual abuse allegations within the Church and the Church in Pennsylvania spending millions of dollars in legislative lobbying efforts relating to legal rights for abuse victims are both inappropriate, especially in the face of evidence that more than 1,000 children were molested by hundreds of predator Roman Catholic priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses.

U.S. Catholic Bishops on Wednesday voted to establish a hotline for reporting allegations that church leaders are involved in abuse or covering up for priests. Hotline operators would relay allegations to regional supervisory bishops, according to The Associated Press.

“I’ve been completely unsatisfied with their response,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who presented the landmark clergy abuse case to a grand jury last year.

“Their big idea was to set up a hotline coming back to the church, that’s covering up the cover-up,” he said during an interview this week with CNHI newspapers, including The Daily Item.

Shapiro also blasted church funding for efforts to sway state legislation relating to the time limits victims have to bring lawsuits against alleged abusers. New York and New Jersey, among other states, have passed laws creating avenues for adult victims of child sex abuse to file lawsuits even if the statute of limitations in their cases have expired.

Those reforms have stalled in the Pennsylvania Legislature over opposition from the insurance industry and lobbyists for the Catholic church.

“What I find unconscionable is that the bishops are lobbying to stop these reforms from passing,” Shapiro said. “They’ve spent millions of dollars of parishioners’ money to lobby lawmakers to have less accountability and less protections for victims.”

A report commissioned by a group of law firms revealed that the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania has spent more on lobbying since 2011 than in any other northeastern state. The report put the church’s Pennsylvania lobbying price tag at $5.3 million. Church officials have said that their lobbying expenses cover a myriad of issues.

Shapiro said he remains optimistic that despite the lobbying efforts, the state General Assembly will take action on statute of limitations reforms, expanding legal options for childhood victims of sexual abuse.

The church reporting hotline appears to be unnecessary and redundant. The Pennsylvania Child Protective Services Law, signed into law in 1975, lays out specific, mandatory steps for reporting any form of child abuse. Under this law, clergymen, priests, rabbis and ministers, along with people working in a variety of occupations, including educators, health care providers, attorneys, social service workers, and many others who come into contact with children and families through their work, are designated as “mandated reporters” and are required to file any report or evidence of child abuse.

Rather than establishing their own internal hotline system, bishops and priests should be advising all of their parishioners to immediately report any indications or evidence of child abuse or sexual misconduct directly to law enforcement or any mandated reporter.

NOTE: Opinions expressed in The Daily Item’s editorials are the consensus of the publisher and top newsroom executives. Today’s was written by Digital Editor Dave Hilliard.