Editorial | After long wait, will abuse victims get justice?

By Todd Berkey
Tribune-Democrat
January 30, 2021

https://www.tribdem.com/news/editorials/editorial-after-long-wait-will-abuse-victims-get-justice/article_e754572e-625d-11eb-b90a-57a36e3a58a2.html

For nearly a decade, we’ve been calling for action in Harrisburg to provide victims of child sexual abuse with the opportunity to seek damages from their abusers – even if they’ve moved past the statute of limitations for civil action.

The state Legislature has been unwilling to directly provide justice for these adults who were victimized as children.

The Pennsylvania House did vote this week to pass the buck and put the idea before the state’s voters. The measure now goes to the Senate, and could be on the May ballot if approved there.

A plan also passed both chambers last year, and needs to be approved twice in successive years to become a ballot referendum item.

Since the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State in 2011, and especially since the 2016 and 2018 grand jury reports into abuse in seven Roman Catholic dioceses, the chorus has grown from victims seeking a window of time in which to file suits.

The 2016 report found that more than 50 clergy members in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown had sexually abused children over many decades. The second investigation two years later added 300 more accused priests in six other dioceses.

Victims, including Johnstown’s Shaun Dougherty, have lobbied for a response in Harrisburg – and all the way to the Vatican.

Opponents, including the church and insurance companies, have argued that since the abuse happened years ago and many of the accused are now deceased, such action would only serve to punish the institutions.

But as two grand-jury probes have shown, institutions shared in the abuse by covering up reports, moving priests from parish to parish and using reserve funds to pay families to not press charges.

State Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat, has visited our region many times to speak on behalf of voiceless victims. He has stood with Dougherty, Attorney General Josh Shapiro and other advocates in calling for a window of just two years for victims to act.

He believes holding institutions accountable for a lack of action or oversight is appropriate.

We agree.

“The bishops aided and abetted,” Rozzi told our Harrisburg reporter, John Finnerty. “The victims had no chance.”

Rozzi had revealed that he had been abused by a priest when he was 13 years old in 1983.

At the time, the statute of limitations was five years for criminal prosecution and two years for civil claims – “a joke,” Rozzi said in 2016, noting that the same priest was later charged for molesting other boys.

Some dioceses established funds to make payments to victims, with $84 million in claims paid out to 564 victims.

That’s a fraction of the number of people who have suffered abuse, and Shapiro noted that only two priests named in the 2018 report were arrested, because most cases had passed the statute of limitations.

The Legislature did adopt reforms in 2018 that were signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf:

• The criminal statute of limitations was removed for the most serious abuse of future child sex abuse victims;

• The statute of limitations for future child victims to file lawsuits was raised to age 50;

• The deadline victims ages 18-24 have to file lawsuits was raised to age 30, and young adults now have 20 years to notify police for criminal prosecution.

While we support the changes, none of those measures provides retroactive help for victims – the many who had moved past the statute before the law was changed.

Perhaps a ballot referendum will do what the Legislature would not – provide that window for abuse victims.

We urge voters so approve this measure overwhelmingly if it appears on the ballot this year.

“This is an easy vote,” Rozzi said. “Victims have waited long enough.”