PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
December 20, 2018
By Julia Terruso and Angela Couloumbis
Last month, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia launched a compensation fund program that would, in the words of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, begin to acknowledge the “evil done” to scores, if not hundreds, of victims who were abused as children by Catholic clergy.
The fund, and others like it statewide, were established in part as a preemptive measure in the wake of an unsuccessful but hotly contested legislative proposal to change the statute of limitations and let victims sue for decades-old abuse. Church officials and some advocates have hailed the new efforts to acknowledge and compensate victims.
Yet an entire class of victims is being shut out of Philadelphia’s program because their assailants belonged to independent Catholic religious orders, even in cases where the abuse occurred at diocesan parishes or schools. Nearly a fourth of the abuse claims submitted so far to the archdiocese have been rejected because they allege abuse by members of religious orders, such as the Franciscans, Augustinians, or Jesuits.
One woman who filed such a claim this fall said it was the first time she ever told anyone about the Spiritan order priest she said repeatedly pulled her from her first-grade class in the 1950s to grope her at Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament school in the city’s Fairmount section.
When she was told she was ineligible for compensation, she said, “I felt like I was being violated all over again.”
The Philadelphia Archdiocese was the first diocese statewide to launch its compensation fund, formally known as the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (IRRP), and already has fielded 42 applications. The other dioceses are expected to have their funds up and running early next year.
Philadelphia’s program is open to any person who was a child victim of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon within its jurisdiction, which beyond the city includes Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties. Claims can be submitted through Sept. 30, 2019.
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