Missouri announces its own investigation into Catholic Church sex abuse

First state to announce probe after release of Pennsylvania report

The Washington Post

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said this week that his office will investigate allegations of sexual abuse by clergy in the St. Louis area, launching an independent inquiry in a region that is home to more than a half-million Catholics.

This review makes Missouri the first state to publicly announce such an inquiry after the searing Pennsylvania grand jury report released earlier this month, which documenteda wave of abuses and coverups spanning decades and involving more than 300 Catholicpriests.

It remains unclear whether other states have launched new efforts to investigate alleged abuses after the Pennsylvania report. While other states may be conducting or considering beginning investigations, none has said so publicly. The Washington Post reached out to the offices of attorneys general in 49 states and the District of Columbia after the Pennsylvania report was released to survey their responses.

Authorities in most of these offices either said that they could not comment on potential investigations or that their offices lacked the authority to immediately act and investigate local cases.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis said Thursday that it welcomed the review in Missouri and that the examination was being conducted at its request.

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson said he knew the public was calling on the attorney general’s office to investigate the Catholic Church and that “we have nothing to hide,” adding that he was inviting Mr. Hawley to review the church’s files on anyone who has been accused of sexual abuse.

“The protection of children from criminal abuse is one of my office’s top priorities,” Mr. Hawley wrote in a letter to Archbishop Carlson on Thursday. “I look forward to cooperating with you to ensure that the children of the Archdiocese of St. Louis are fully protected from any threat of abuse.”

The archdiocese says it serves more than 511,000 Catholics, or about 1 in 5 people in the St. Louis region. Hawley called the archdiocese’s cooperation “essential” to the review and said his office would put together “a team of experienced attorneys and career prosecutors to ensure a vigorous, searching and comprehensive inquiry.”

Hesaid this team would review documents as well as interview alleged victims and people who may have witnessed alleged abuses. Mr. Hawley’s office had told The Post before announcing the review that it lacked the ability to investigate “allegations of this kind of criminal activity,” saying that was the jurisdiction of the local prosecutor. On Friday, his office said that it will release a public report when its review has been completed and that anything deemed a potential criminal violation will be sent to local prosecutors.

Mr. Hawley, a Republican, is challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, in a closely watched Senate race. Ms. McCaskill is one of a handful of Democratic senators seeking reelection in states that Donald Trump won in 2016.

The grand jury report released by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro earlier this month — which detailed graphic accounts of abuse and assailed “church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institutions above all” — sent shock waves around the world. Pope Francis this week wrote an unprecedented letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics in which he said the church had failed to deal with “crimes” against children. “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandonedthem,” he wrote.

Experts say the report could help drive reforms to statutes of limitations, which Mr. Shapiro said hindered the ability of law enforcement officials to pursue charges in cases the grand jury examined. Survivors have called for more reviews nationwide. The group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said in a statement this week that it was calling for “every state’s attorney general [to] follow Pennsylvania’s lead and launch formal investigations.”

While many officials in states from Alaska to Alabama declined to comment last week on whether any investigations were underway, many others across the country said that statutes vary from state to state, granting attorneys general widely varying authorities and capabilities for criminal law enforcement and prosecution.

In Ohio — where roughly 1 in 5 adults are Catholic, according to a Pew Research Center survey — the office of Attorney General Mike DeWinesaid an investigation would have to originate on a local level rather than with the state’s chief legal officer.

“Ohio’s laws are different than Pennsylvania’s,” Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Mr. DeWine, wrote in an email. “In Ohio, as a homerule state, original criminal jurisdiction to initiate such investigations resides with local law enforcement.”

Mr. Tierney said that Mr. DeWine would need a local prosecutor’s request to impanel a grand jury like the one used in Pennsylvania, and that as of this week, no such requesthad been received.

Representatives for several other attorneys general similarly said investigations must either be conducted on a local level entirely or be referred by such authorities to state officials. The office of the Iowa attorney general said it did not have an investigation underway, writing that officials in that office “don’t have the specificstatutory authority to call a statewide investigative grandjury.”

Some state attorneys general pledged to work with local prosecutors on the issue.

“Victims in New York deserve to be heard as well,” Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood, said in a statement about the Pennsylvania report.

“The Attorney General has directed her Criminal Division leadership to reach out to local District Attorneys — who are the only entities that currently have the power to convene a grand jury to investigate these matters — in order to establish a potential partnership on this issue.”

Representatives in other states noted that in comparison with Pennsylvania, their attorneys general had relatively limited power or had different abilities to act.