PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC
JOHNSTOWN — The Altoona-Johnstown Catholic bishop, along with Western Pennsylvania’s top federal prosecutor, are set to announce joint plans Monday to prevent future children from sexual abuse at area churches.
This planned announcement comes more than a year after a grand jury report shed light on decades of alleged child sex abuse at the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.
Acting U.S. Attorney Soo Song and Altoona-Johnstown Bishop Mark Bartchak have called a news conference Monday at 1 p.m. at the Penn Traffic Building in Johnstown.
Song and Bartchark plan “to announce a collaborative framework to protect the children of the diocese from sexual abuse,” according to a media advisory.
A year ago Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a 147-page report based on secret diocesan records and other evidence that detailed abuse by more than 50 priests and clergy against hundreds of children. The report criticized Bartchak’s predecessors, James Hogan, who headed the diocese from 1966 to 1986 and died in 2005, and Joseph Adamec who succeeded Hogan and retired in 2005.
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