PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA
[with video]
Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa. – It has been nearly one year since a grand jury investigation uncovered hundreds of sexual abuse cases, within the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese and on March 1, there will be a news conference outside of the diocese offices in Altoona.
One victim said progress has not been made.
“It was a normal lifestyle except for one very [un]normal thing,” Shaun Dougherty, a church abuse victim, said.
Dougherty said at 10-years old, he was sexually abused by a catholic priest at St. Clement’s Church in Johnstown. He said it went on for three years, but he never told anyone.
At 21, he joined the U.S. Navy and took an oath for the military.
“That oath spoke to me and ever since then, I felt a burning desire to speak out, to tell what happened,” Dougherty said, but when it came to the abuse that happened to him, no one took him seriously until 2016, when the report uncovered hundreds of cases from the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese over a 40 year span, and Dougherty was one of those cases.
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