PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
May 17, 2018
Steve Esack
Call Harrisburg Bureau
The Allentown Diocese has become Pennsylvania’s second regional Catholic administration to announce it will not attempt to stall publication of a statewide grand jury report expected to detail decades of clergy sex abuse.
The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office is finishing the report. It would follow a grand jury investigation, started in 2016, into six of eight Catholic dioceses that serve communities in nearly every part of the state.
“The Diocese of Allentown continues to cooperate fully with the Office of the Attorney General,” spokesman Matt Kerr said in a statement today. “We will not challenge the release of the grand jury report.”
It’s not clear what, if any, legal challenge a diocese or other institution or individual could use to stop a prosecutor’s office from publishing a grand jury investigation.
“Any investigating grand jury, by an affirmative majority vote of the full investigating grand jury, may, at any time during its term submit to the supervising judge an investigating grand jury report,” according to the state law outlining jury rules.
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