NEW YORK (NY)
ABC News
June 6, 2019
By Meghan Keneally and Pete Madden
West Virginia’s attorney general says church leaders in his state are withholding information that could prove useful in his fight to expose what he called “a history of secrecy and concealment” within the Catholic Church on alleged sexual abuse by members of the clergy.
In a recent interview with ABC News, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican who has served as the state’s top law enforcement official since 2013, expressed concern that even after two subpoenas and a lawsuit, the state’s diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has yet to make a number of relevant documents available to his office.
“That’s not the kind of transparent process that West Virginians deserve, and the church can and should do better than that,” Morrisey told ABC News. “Those are actions that disappointed me. It disappointed me as the state’s attorney general, and it disappointed me as a Catholic.”
The push by the attorney general comes amid a turbulent time for the church, which is battling numerous sexual abuse scandals.
West Virginia is one of several states to probe abuse allegations in their local dioceses in wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing a massive cover-up of clergy abuse allegations by the Catholic Church. Investigations are currently underway in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the Archdiocese of Anchorage in Alaska.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.