Witnesses await church sex abuse report with hope for change

held this secret for so long and now I’m telling you the details and I want to get this right.’ There’s a lot going through your head.”

Dozens of witnesses testified in the state attorney general’s two-year grand jury investigation that victim advocates expect will produce the largest and most exhaustive clergy sexual abuse report by a U.S. state.

VanSickle, 55, testified he was sexually abused in 1981 by a priest in the Erie Diocese. The priest was arrested in May and charged with attempted assault, although VanSickle’s allegation fell outside Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations for prosecutors to file charges.

Witnesses see the investigation as a sort of vindication of their trauma, the years of reliving the abuse and the fear that nobody would believe them.

They want the grand jury report to bring sweeping change, forcing their abusers and the church to be accountable and take responsibility. They hope it encourages other victims who haven’t come forward after years of dealing alone with their trauma to get the help they need.

They also hope it propels lawmakers to change Pennsylvania law to give prosecutors more time to pursue charges against child predators and victims more time to sue for damages.

The grand jury began investigating the dioceses — Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton — after prosecutors set up a hotline to solicit information from victims following an earlier investigation into the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

That grand jury in 2016 detailed allegations of the abuse of hundreds of children by more than 50 priests and others in the church over decades.

Witnesses who testified in front of this latest grand jury went to the attorney general’s offices in downtown Pittsburgh, and answered questions posed by Daniel Dye, a state prosecutor leading the investigation, in a brightly lit courtroom-like chamber with huge windows. years ago as a 17-year-old in a Catholic high school.

Jim Faluszczak, 49, had written in journals for years about being sexually abused as a teen by a priest and, after he became a priest in the Erie Diocese, his efforts to get the diocese to investigate it.

“It was scary, I had never done anything like that before,” said Mary McHale, a Reading resident who told of her experience nearly 30