Are the estimates of Catholic Church victims and offenders too low in California?

A Catholic abuse victim’s advocacy group sent a letter Wednesday to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra asking for an independent statewide probe into decades of priest molestations and the church’s pattern of covering up the abuse, similar to the groundbreaking grand jury report released earlier this month in Pennsylvania.

SNAP called for Catholics across the nation, including its membership of 25,000 survivors and supporters, to contact their states’ top prosecutor, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, and demand a grand jury probe. Statewide investigations would help unveil a decades-long scandal that has come out in dribs and drabs through lawsuits, news stories and smaller probes.

“The only recourse those harmed as children have is to call on the government to expose the true extent of the problem, so that both officials and the public can understand the necessity for statute of limitations reform,” wrote Melanie Sakoda, a Pleasant Hill member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, in a letter she sent to Becerra. “I am calling on you to use the power of your office to mount an investigation into sexual crimes against minors by Catholic clergy and their cover up by Church officials within the state of California.”

Becerra’s office did not immediately return a request for comment, but last week said it does not comment on any potential investigations.

The 1,400-page grand jury report in Pennsylvania looked at six Catholic diocese over seven decades and found more than 300 priests had sexually abused children and were protected by a church hierarchy. The probe, one of the broadest looks into the scandal to date, identified 1,000 child victims, but warned that there were probably thousands more. The grand jury reviewed more than two million documents during the 18-month investigation.

SNAP members want that to happen in California and across the country to finally expose the full extent of the church’s behavior.

“The Pennsylvania grand jury report proves conclusively that church generated data is not accurate or trustworthy,” said Dan Mcnevin, a member of SNAP who was abused by a priest in Fremont. “The only way to understand the true scope of the California diocesan sex abuse problem is for civil authorities, with subpoena power, to empanel grand juries or in some other way professionally investigate each Diocese.”

He said to fully understand the “cover-up” is to investigate California’s bishops who oversaw the parishes, many who are still alive and could testify.

SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein this week calling for a nationwide investigation into the “system-wide network of sexual violence and cover-up.”