PENNSYLVANIA
Verdict
11 APR 2016
MARCI A. HAMILTON
As the Pennsylvania House gets closer than it has ever been to meaningful statute of limitations reform for child sex abuse victims, it is interesting to watch how prosecutors across the state are acting. As I discussed in my last column, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and Pennsylvania Attorney General have issued a series of scathing grand jury reports on seriatim and systematic child sex abuse in major trusted institutions, like Penn State, the Philadelphia Archdiocese, and the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. In a related though not identical arena, the Montgomery County DA’s race became a referendum on failure to prosecute Bill Cosby for rape, with the win going to the candidate who sided with the rape victims.
Other Pennsylvania district attorneys have hewn to the increasingly outdated position that they owe allegiance to the Catholic bishops, with the Allentown DA most recently expressing this sentiment.
Sadly for the vast majority of sex abuse survivors, the DAs’ discussions about whether to prosecute or to change the statute of limitations have mostly been about the Catholic bishops’ cover up. I say “sadly,” because there are other institutions putting children at risk, and they get swept away in the loud and persistent denunciations of SOL reform by the Catholic Conference.
For this reason, I will examine the strange position Bucks County DA David Heckler has taken with respect to child sex abuse and sex assault victims. His office has a pending grand jury that, if a report were issued, would make the case for SOL reform for child sex abuse victims beyond the Church. Yet the grand jury, which was initiated in the fall of 2014, has yet to issue a report, leaving many victims wondering why.
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