PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
June 11, 2019
By Liz Navratil and Peter Smith
A child sex abuse survivor’s lawsuit against the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown — filed after a 2016 grand jury report revealed decades of abuse and coverup there — can proceed to a jury, a state appellate court ruled on Tuesday.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge Superior Court panel could open the door for similar lawsuits over decades-old abuse to be filed against six other dioceses, including Pittsburgh and Greensburg, which were subjects of a similar grand jury report last year.
Altoona-area woman Renee Rice sued the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and others in 2016 alleging fraud, constructive fraud and civil conspiracy, beginning with her sexual abuse as a child in the 1970s and 1980s and continuing as some in the church hid it.
While the diocese argued that the statute of limitations had expired in her case, Ms. Rice’s attorney, Alan Perer, argued that she had no way of knowing about the extent of the cover-up until after a grand jury report was released in 2016. On Tuesday, a panel of Superior Court judges sided with Ms. Rice, sending her case back to Blair County Common Pleas Court for a possible jury trial.
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