PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 2013
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
Mariana Sorensen, author of two high-profile grand jury reports on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, has resigned from the district attorney’s office. Her last day of work was Friday, June 21.
Sorensen, an assistant district attorney in the special investigations unit, declined to be interviewed. A polarizing figure, she was regarded by victims advocates as a champion crusader, and by church critics as a Catholic-hating zealot.
The 2005 grand jury report on the archdiocese was a ground-breaking document nationally that exposed sexual abuse of minors by the local clergy. This reporter hailed it as a “literary masterpiece.” To the local archdiocese’s lawyers, however, it was “a vile, mean-spirited diatribe” that sought to convict the Catholic Church in the court of public opinion, based upon “an unfair and inaccurate portrayal of facts.”
Archdiocese lawyers may have argued over how the facts were portrayed, but they couldn’t argue with the weight of the evidence. The 2005 grand jury report was based upon 45,000 documents subpoenaed from the archdiocese’s own secret archive files. Those files, kept in a locked safe at archdiocese headquarters, catalogued the sins of priests over four decades.
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