ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call
August 9, 2019
By Paul Muschick
The cries for justice were deafening last August after a Pennsylvania grand jury disclosed accusations that hundreds of priests sexually abused more than 1,000 children, and that their sins were covered up by the Catholic church and others.
Those cries still haven’t been answered.
The grand jury recommended that state lawmakers allow future sexual abusers to be criminally prosecuted no matter how long it takes for them to be exposed. It pointed out that’s the law in more than half of the country. It also urged that long-ago victims be allowed to sue retroactively.
Lawmakers did nothing.
The lack of action is disturbing and doesn’t do justice to the work of the grand jury, which was groundbreaking on several levels.
* It was perhaps the most explosive expose since The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigation in 2002.
* It covered nearly the entire state, while other investigations were regional.
* It named priests going back decades and went into great detail, much of it stomach-turning, of what they were accused of doing.
* It pulled many of those details from the church’s own files, its “secret archives.”
* It prompted at least 14 other state attorneys general to launch investigations or reviews of their dioceses.
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