PENNSYLVANIA
PhillyVoice
BY BRIAN HICKEY
PhillyVoice Staff
Monday could have been the day that clergy sex-abuse victim John-Michael Delaney finally got decades of frustration off his chest during a private meeting with Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput.
But in the days since Delaney told PhillyVoice of that meeting – something he’d avoided for decades on account of “not being able to be in the same room as a priest” – officials told the victim of one of the “archdiocese’s most brutal abusers” that the meeting was off.
Delaney said it was payback for going public; an archdiocesan spokesman said the meeting “will take place in due time provided all the parameters [of privacy] are respected.”
That didn’t sit too well with Delaney, who flew up from Tennessee this weekend to speak at a Monday afternoon press conference on the sidewalk outside of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul on Logan Circle.
There, abuse victims railed against the church’s opposition to House Bill 1947, which proposed an extension of statutes of limitation dictating how long they had to file complaints against their alleged abusers.
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