Georgia AG opens sex abuse investigation of the state’s Catholic Church – home to D.C.’s next archbishop

WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

May 1, 2019

By Michelle Boorstein

Georgia’s attorney general Tuesday has followed more than a dozen state prosecutors by reportedly opening a probe into sex abuse claims against the Catholic Church – this time in a region whose leader heads in a few weeks to take over the scandal-ridden Archdiocese of Washington.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta reported that Attorney General Chris Carr and others have been working on the case since summer, and the investigation itself is just starting, the outlets reported.

Carr told Channnel 2 that his office has been in “open dialogue” with the church and that Atlanta Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory encouraged them to do the investigation. Georgia has a second Catholic diocese, based in Savannah, which is also included in the probe.

Pope Francis in early April named Gregory to replace Cardinal Donald Wuerl, a longtime administrator in Pittsburgh and Washington who resigned in the fall after coming under fire for his handling of abuse cases. Wuerl’s handling of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church was scrutinized in a grand jury report out of Pennsylvania last summer about the handling of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. That report led multiple state prosecutors to open investigations of their own.

It wasn’t clear what specific evidence or cases, if any, led Carr to open the probe into the Atlanta and Savannah dioceses. Some of the states that recently began investigating the church said they assumed the problems and cover-ups named in Pennsylvania exist everywhere, and that they mostly want to hear from victims to be sure crimes committed are punished.

Carr told the Atlanta media that the investigation will be handled by Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council. If any prosecutions come out of the investigation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, they’ll be handled on a local level, he said.

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