PRIESTS FROM HELL
Prosecutor: More than 1,000 children abused Pervert clerics coverup stretched from Pa. to N.Y.
Hundreds of pedophile priests – including some with New York ties – abused and terrorized Pennsylvania children for decades, while complicit Catholic Church officials covered up their offenses or turned a blind eye, according to a damning new grand jury report released Tuesday.
Over the course of 70 years, the trusted, ordained men of God, more than 300 in all, raped and abused more than 1,000 boys and girls with impunity while serving an institution that routinely shuffled them from parish to parish, giving them license and enablingthem to prey upon new victims.
The disturbing details were unearthed in a statewide grand jury report that was two years in the making, an ugly inventory described by officials as the biggest and most exhaustive ever undertaken by a U.S. state.
“The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid scandal,” the report says. “Priests were raping little boys and girls and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing: They hid it all.”
The report includes horrific instances of abuse, including descriptions of a priest who raped a young girl in the hospital after her tonsils were taken out, and another priest who, after impregnating a 17-year-old girl, was allowed to stay in the church by forging a signature on a marriage certificate and then divorcing the girl.
Though the 884-page report is heavily redacted, there are more than enough details to paint a picture of rampant, unchecked abuse that affected victims for decades and stained the church for years to come.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro laid out — in graphic detail — the accusations against Msgr. Thomas Benestad, who served in both Bethlehem and Allentown churches, and others.
Benestad sexually abused a boy for two years, beginning when the child was 9 and taking catechism classes, according to the report. The boy was brought to his office to be reprimanded for wearing shorts, which was forbidden. The priest told the boy to get on his knees and pray then forced the child to perform oral sex on him, the report says. Afterward, the father washed the child’s mouth out with holy water, according to the findings. Benestad later retired in Florida.
In one of the most depraved cases, the Rev. Edward Graff, assigned to the Allentown Diocese, sexually abused “Joey B” so badly that the boy severely injured his back. Later, he became addicted to painkillers and overdosed.
"Father Graff did more than rape me. He killed my potential,” “Joey B” said before he died.
Graff was jailed in Texas in 2002 on charges of molesting a teenage boy. He died in jail later that year. He also has been accused of abusing state Rep. Mark Rozzi when Rozzi was an altar boy at Holy Guardian Angels parish in Reading in the 1980s.
“We apologize to everyone who has been hurt by the past actions of some members of the clergy,” said Allentown Bishop Alfred Schlert. “We know that these past actions have caused pain and mistrust for many people. The victims and survivors of abuse are in our prayers daily.” One priest has already come clean as a result of the probe. The Rev. John Sweeney of the Greensburg Diocese pleaded guilty last month to a charge of indecent assault after admitting that he forced a 10-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him during the 1991-92 school year.
A second priest has also been charged as a result of the grand jury investigation. Erie Diocese priest David Poulson has been charged with indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children and corruption of minors for the alleged sexual abuse of two boys over a period of years between 2002 and 2010.
Prosecutors have said Poulson assaulted a boy more than 20 times and would later, in a sickening twist, require the boy to confess the abuse to him.
Pennsylvania’s pedophile priest net also ensnared several unholy men from New York.
Deacon James Rush was under the authority of the Archdiocese of New York but working in Pennsylvania in 2015, when two women accused him of engaging in “inappropriate actions that crossed boundary lines,” the report says.
Rush was then working for the Diocese of Harrisburg. Confronted over the allegations, Rush retired. But he continued assisting around the local parish.
A year later, a woman reported to the Harrisburg Diocese and the Children and Youth Services that he developed an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl. Rush allegedly took the teen to a hockey game where he held her hand, told her he “only had eyes for her,” and referred to her as his “girlfriend.” The girl also told the woman that the deacon kissed her and told her not to tell her mother.
Harrisburg disclosed the complaints to the Archdiocese of New York in June 2016. The letter said it determined no sexual abuse occurred against the girl, but added that Rush’s actions constituted what “we might deem grooming behavior.”
Rush had been living and working in Harrisburg since he left the Archdiocese of New York in 2002, said spokesman Joseph Zwilling. He was suspended by the Archdiocese of Harrisburg in 2016, said Zwilling, adding, “When the Archdiocese of New York was notified … about the suspension, we immediately suspended him as well.”
Another priest from the Archdiocese of New York, Father James McLucas, was living in Elysburg, Pa., as the chaplain to the monastery when the head mother of the monastery called the Diocese of Harrisburg after finding out McLucas had
sexually abused a 14-year-old girl and continued a relation York ship with her into her adulthood. This was reported to the Archdiocese of New York in 2012. The Diocese of Harrisburg revoked McLucas’ faculties to perform ministry.
Zwilling said the Archdiocese received an affidavit from the woman in question stating that she was in her 20s and in college when her sexual relationship with McLucas began.
The report also highlights the case of the Rev. Albert Liberatore Jr., who was arrested in New York City for a felony sexual assault on a minor. He pleaded guilty in 2005 to sodomy and other sexual assault charges. Two years later, the Scranton Diocese agreed to a $3 million settlement with the victim who was abused by Liberatore several times between 1999 and 2002.
A spokesman for the New State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, said the state “will never abandon those who have been hurt.”
“Nothing can ever undo the damage that has been done, but the church has indeed taken many positive steps and made great progress at reform,” Poust said in a statement.
Church leaders routinely discouraged victims from reporting the abuse. “Several diocesan administrators, including the bishops, often dissuaded victims from reporting abuse to police, pressured law enforcement to terminate or avoid an investigation or conducted their own deficient, biased investigation without reporting crimes against children to the proper authorities,” the report says.
Some of the accused priests have died, and many others will avoid prosecution because the statute of limitations has expired. “The longer they covered it up, the less chance that law enforcement could prosecute these predators because the statute of limitations would run,” Pennsylvania State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at a news conference in Harrisburg. “Almost every instance of child abuse (the grand jury) found was too old to be prosecuted.”
Many states, including New York have tried for years to change the statute of limitations on sexual abuse, but Albany legislators couldn’t muster the political will to push it through.
“The longer they covered it up, the less chance that law enforcement could prosecute these predators because the statute of limitations would run,” the Pennsylvania attorney general said at a news conference in Harrisburg. “Almost every instance of child abuse (the grand jury) found was too old to be prosecuted.”
Outside St. Patrick’s CatheMidtown, dral in Catholics poured out of the 5 p.m. Mass and contemplated the ongoing scandal.
“It has to end,” Johanne Remy, 47, a bankruptcy services specialist from Laurelton, Queens, said. “It can take decades for people to come forward or even just talk about what happened.”
Angelo Iamone, 58, a retired forester from Hurley, Wis., said that the church has to take ownership of the problem and stop coddling the perpetrators.
“The church should take care of it themselves and really nail these priests,” he said. “No more retirements or special retreats. Otherwise we’ll lose more good Catholics, the church will have no credibility. It’s the only way the church can heal. When they find these priests, they should turn them over to the police immediately.”