It is time to face the horrible truth: The Catholic church is a pedophile ring. According to the grand jury report of six dioceses in Pennsylvania, over a period of 70 years, 300 priests abused over 1,000 children in Pennsylvania and church officials repeatedly covered it up. The release of the report is a searing indictment of the filth that has existed in the Catholic church. Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades. If you think this statement is hyperbole, consider that the grand jury report includes, but is by no means limited to, the case of a ring of pedophile priests in Pittsburgh, who raped their male victims, took pornographic pictures of them and marked them by giving them gold crosses to wear so that they could be easily recognized by other abusers. At an emotional news conference Tuesday, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro stood before some of the victims of the abuse in the six Pennsylvania dioceses (which include Pittsburgh and the state capital Harrisburg). Announcing the report, Shapiro said that, for the first time, “we can begin to understand the systematic coverup of church officials.” The report was written by 23 grand jurors wrote over the course of two years, and is very clear about how the authorities of the church protected the clergy while further abusing victims with payoffs, silencing and attempts to denigrate their character. Two cardinals, Cardinal Wuerl and the now-deceased Cardinal Bevilacqua (who also figured prominently in the Philadelphia grand jury report), are among those who disciplined but moved around clergy who sexually abused children. While this report covers only six dioceses in Pennsylvania (there are eight in total, but the archdioceses of Philadelphia and the diocese of Altoona-Johnston were the subject of three previous grand jury investigations), it is breathtakingly horrific in documenting the scope of sexual abuse of children. It chronicles in detail how the Catholic hierarchy from the diocese to the Vatican worked not only mitigate the church's legal exposure, but to maintain strategies to “avoid scandal.” Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades. These strategies used to subvert stories of abuse were so common that the FBI reviewed a significant portion of the evidence collected and received by the grand jury and found a series of practices engaged in by church leaders to conceal the truth. For instance, church authorities who documented the cases for internal use never used the word "rape," only “inappropriate contact.” Investigations were conducted by other clergy members, rather than trained personnel. Church-run health centers, not lay psychiatric facilities, were used to examine priests accused of pedophilia. Housing and funds were provided for priests, even when it was known they were raping children. Priests were moved from the area only if their communities found out, to other communities where the abusers and abuses were not known. Most importantly, the hierarchy was instructed to not inform law enforcement about abuses reported by parishioners, but to consider any such case an “internal personnel matter.” These practices sanctioned by the church hierarchy allowed the abuse of children to continue. The grand jury report is also rife with horror upon horror — anal rape, fondling, oral sex, child pornography, pregnancies, suicides — perpetrated upon children by priests, who were then moved about by church leaders who knew full well the despicable deeds they had done to children, and often did again. For instance, one woman was raped by a priest at the age of seven in her hospital room after surgery on her tonsils, was raped again by the same priest at age 13, and then again at age 19 while pregnant; she considered suicide. What was the priest's punishment for that and the other rapes and molestations to which he admitted? Bishop Ronald Gainer of Harrisburg, in submitting the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated: “I believe the scandal caused by his admission of the sexual abuse of minor girls has been sufficiently repaired by acceptance of the penal precept.” In other words, Gainer did not want the priest defrocked and so, as punishment, The Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith decided, after reviewing his file, that the priest in question should lead a life of prayer and penance. Prayer, and penance. An inadequate, paltry response for repeatedly raping a child. What is clear from this report — as well as the previous grand jury reports from Philadelphia in 2005 and 2011 and Altoona-Johnston in 2016 — is that the Catholic church cannot be and never should have been trusted nor expected to root out pedophiles in the midst, let alone punish them appropriately. Mercy was not extended to victims, but to perpetrators. Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars. The former were supposed to refrain from premarital sex, same-sex relationships, abortions and masturbation. The sexual prohibitions of the church did not extend to the clergy raping children, and priests in Pennsylvania even got a pass for paying for abortions for young girls they raped and got pregnant. Adding insult to injury, the Catholic church in Pennsylvania is currently fighting an effort by Rep. Mark Rozzi, himself a victim of clergy sexual abuse, to have the civil statute of limitation in such cases eliminated. Currently, victims can file civil claims until the age of 30 and criminal claims until the age of 50; the church supports the latter but opposes the former. Once again, the desire to protect the church, not the victims of the clergy, continues to be the priority for bishops and cardinals in the Catholic Church. Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars. It is long past time for not only abusive priests, but monsignors, bishops and cardinals to be held accountable by local, state and federal law enforcement for their crimes against children. To date, the only administrator convicted of any crime was Monsignor William Lynn of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, whose conviction was subsequently overturned, and has been scheduled for retrial. But most of those who habitually moved abusers, such as Cardinal Wuerl, enjoy the prestige and perks of being high-ranking clergy, while many abused children must try to manage their physical and psychological pain. What the now-multiple Pennsylvania grand jury reports show clearly is that the Roman Catholic church has treated the protection of its pedophiles, rapists and sexual abusers as their highest priority. They have been unwilling and unable to police clergy sexual abuse while determined to keep responsibility for doing so within the Church — but they don't want to be held accountable for mishandling it. Like a criminal syndicate, it is time for the Church to be broken apart and cleaned out.<doc-sep>Special agents from the F.B.I.’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime reviewed evidence collected by the grand jury, the report says, and identified a series of practices that were regularly used by the six dioceses to cover up reports of abuse. “While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same,” the report says. “The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal.’ That is not our word, but theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered.” [Read: Church covered up child sex abuse in Pennsylvania for decades.] Here is how the grand jury, in caustic terms, described the Catholic Church’s methods for covering up abuse and protecting priests:<doc-sep>The searing grand jury report issued Tuesday in Pennsylvania that accuses bishops and other Roman Catholic Church leaders in that state of covering up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests has prompted growing calls for justice, while leaving Americans wondering about the broader impact of the revelations on the church and other institutions. But a web of legal barriers stands in the way of prosecuting most of the cases, and efforts to ease those barriers have repeatedly run into political opposition and fierce lobbying by the church and other groups. Pennsylvania lags behind many other states in coming to grips with the problem, despite a series of grand jury investigations stretching back 15 years. [Read about the grand jury investigation and the church’s ‘playbook for concealing the truth.’] What happens next? Not much, legal experts and victims advocates say. The nearly 900-page grand jury report is unlikely to lead to any new criminal charges or civil lawsuits over the abuse that it catalogs, because the statute of limitations has expired on those cases. Current state law allows victims of abuse as children 12 years to sue after they come of age at 18, meaning they must do so by age 30. Criminal complaints must be filed by the time the victim is 50. Those rules leave the vast majority of abuse survivors, who came forward later in life — the grand jury said they include people as old as 83 — with no legal recourse. Only two of the cases in the report have so far led to criminal charges.<doc-sep>
A grand jury in Pennsylvania released a 1,300-word report Tuesday detailing allegations about the Roman Catholic Church's decades-long cover-up of sexual abuse of nearly 1,000 children by 300 "predator priests." The report details what investigators described in the report as a "a playbook for concealing the truth" that was used by officials to cover up 70 years of abuse of children by 300 Roman Catholic priests. Across files from six dioceses, special agents identified several patterns using special language and illegitimate investigations to downplay accusations and protect the priests. A grand jury in Pennsylvania released a 1,300-page report Tuesday detailing allegations that the Roman Catholic Church spent decades covering up sexual abuse claims against 300 "predator priests" who are said to have targeted nearly 1,000 children. The report covers 70 years of alleged abuse and the lengths that church officials went to cover up the accusations, using what investigators described in the report as a "a playbook for concealing the truth." Special agents identified several common practices across the files from the six dioceses they investigated that kept the accusations within the church, and avoided recording any criminal identifications in the documents. The report lays out what it said were mechanisms for shielding accused priests from legitimate punishment, including: Using euphemisms for the sexual assaults. "Never say 'rape'; say 'inappropriate contact' or 'boundary issues.'" Choosing fellow clergy members, not unbiased professionals to "ask inadequate questions and then make credibility determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work." "For an appearance of integrity, send priests for 'evaluation' at church -run psychiatric treatment centers," as the priest's diagnosis would be mostly based on his own "'self -reports,' regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child." To completely conceal any wrongdoing even if the priest is removed, "don't say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on "sick leave," or suffering from 'nervous exhaustion.' Or say nothing at all." "Even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses, although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults." If a predator's conduct becomes known to the community, don't remove him from the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser." "Finally and above all, don't tell the police," though sexual abuse of minors is a universally punishable crime, "don't treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, 'in house,'" the text said, according to the report. The report goes on to list 300 cases of individual priests from Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, Erie and Greensburg dioceses with names and graphic details from their accusers. Some of the accused priests protested the report after it was announced, saying it would unfairly damage their reputations. Some information in the document is redacted, but the court released it in full. For decades, the Catholic Church has been hit with sexual abuse allegations in parishes worldwide. Pope Francis has recently accepted a number of resignations from church officials in Chile and Argentina as a result. The Pope admitted in 2017 the Catholic Church was "a bit late" in realizing the damage done by predatory priests who had been accused of raping and molesting children, and was only made worse by the decades-long practice of moving pedophiles around rather than punishing and removing them. Read the full report below: