COLUMBUS (OH)
The Columbus Dispatch
October 13, 2018
By Marty Schladen
The clergy-abuse scandals that have ravaged many states have landed squarely in the middle of the Ohio attorney general campaign.
Steve Dettelbach, the Democratic former U.S. attorney who is seeking the seat, used the controversial issue to bash his Republican opponent, state Auditor Dave Yost, and current Attorney General Mike DeWine, the Republican nominee for governor.
“Both their failure to act and their insistence that they’re rendered unable to act are not surprising, of course,” Dettelbach said in a written statement. “It’s what Ohioans have come to expect from the duo.”
Yost criticized his opponent for seeking to make political hay from the issue.
“It is shockingly inappropriate for Steve to politicize this long-simmering and painful issue for his selfish political gain,” Yost spokesman Carlo LoParo said. “He could’ve impaneled a federal grand jury when he was U.S. attorney. He didn’t do it, and his silence then betrays his opportunist speech now.”
Yost and DeWine also say that a major part of Dettelbach’s proposal conflicts with state law.
Dettelbach’s call comes on the heels of an investigation by a statewide Pennsylvania grand jury whose report in August said 300 priests had engaged in child sexual abuse over seven decades.
As with many other states, Ohio youth also have experienced abuse by Catholic priests and cover-ups by the hierarchy that oversees them.
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