WASHINGTON (PA)
Observer-Reporter
October 21, 2018
We’ve become rather accustomed, unfortunately, to our state lawmakers failing to successfully tackle major issues, whether it be properly funding our public schools or reducing the size of our obscenely expensive Legislature. Now we can add aiding victims of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal to that list.
Members of the state Senate packed up and left town Wednesday, presumably for the last time in this session, without acting on a House bill, or a substitute measure more to its liking, aimed at helping those who were abused by pedophile priests. There are re-election campaigns to be run, don’t you know.
The House bill would have provided a window for abuse victims to sue the church for its systemic failure to protect children from predatory priests, as outlined in the report issued by the grand jury called by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro to look into clergy abuse in six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses. But state Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, proved to be an unmovable obstruction.
Scarnati was fine with granting a reprieve from the statute of limitations and providing a window for sex-abuse victims to sue, but he wanted to allow these victims to sue only those who assaulted them, and not the church institutions that stand accused of covering up abuse.
In a story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Shapiro called that approach “disgraceful.”
“A priest earns about $25,000 a year and will have no ability to pay for the mental-health counseling and the drug and alcohol counseling, the services that these victims need,” said Shapiro. “The only entity that can help support these victims, ironically, is the institution that enabled the abuse, and they are exempt.”
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