Release the report
No reason to hold back grand jury report on abuse
The state Supreme Court owes the people of Pennsylvania an explanation. Its decision Wednesday to bar release, even temporarily, of a grand jury’s report on sexual abuse in six Catholic dioceses is an affront to the victims. It’s also an insult to members of the grand jury — citizens who gave 22 months of their lives on an investigation that required them to review half a million pages of documents and hear testimony from dozens, if not hundreds, of witnesses.
If the result is nothing but secrecy, why put the witnesses and jurors through the trouble and spend an untold sum on the process? State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said he would work “to make sure the victims of this abuse are able to tell their stories and the findings of this investigation are made public to the people of Pennsylvania.” Well he should.
The 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury produced a voluminous, possibly damning, report on decades of misconduct in the Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Allentown, Erie, Harrisburg and Scranton dioceses. The court hasn’t bothered to explain why it’s sitting on it, whether it is doing so temporarily or eternally, or who might have filed petitions precipitating its order.
Kim Bathgate, the court’s spokeswoman, defended the secrecy with the patently false assertion that “all grand jury matters are sealed, including the rationale.” Grand juries gather information and indict behind the scenes but their work often is made public. Witness a previous grand jury’s scathing report, released in in 2016, on sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.
While grand juries are entitled to a certain amount of secrecy, courts are supposed to operate in daylight. Earlier this month, Cambria County President Judge Norman A. Krumenacker III, who supervises the 40th grand jury, publicly explained an order he issued regarding the investigation. If he can do so, the Supreme Court can, too.
Judge Krumenacker’s order rejected petitions from an unknown number of parties who demanded to appear before the grand jury or a judge, tell their side of the story and mold the report to their liking.
Who were these parties? Their identities remain secret. It ought not be the dioceses, which publicly have agreed to the report’s release. It might be individuals in line for the kind of criticism that the Altoona-Johnstown report heaped on church leaders and civil authorities who had an overly cozy relationship with each other and failed to properly investigate reports of abuse. Fearing similar embarrassment, they now may be scrambling to keep their names out of the report, or modify the narrative, to protect their reputations.
These individuals may have appealed Judge Krumenacker’s order to the Supreme Court, and the court may have decided to block release of the report at least until it sorts things out. If so, they don’t deserve this highly unusual treatment.
As Judge Krumenacker helpfully and clearly explained in his public order last month, people criticized by a grand jury have an opportunity to provide a written rebuttal. That’s their avenue for redress. Anything else represents a fundamental, unnecessary change in the operation of grand juries, which summon witnesses and are not supposed to be summoned by them.
Anyone who played even a minor role in covering up clergy child abuse should think long and hard about what Pope Francis reportedly said after initially downplaying allegations of wrongdoing in Chile: “I was part of the problem. I caused this and I apologize to you.”
If it delays releasing a report that sheds light on decades of scandal in the church, the Supreme Court can consider itself part of the problem, too.