Probe demanded in abuse cases
Victims group: Grand jury needed to examine allegations of abuse in California
“It just exposes it and leads to policy changes, which leads to protecting children and that’s the most important thing we can do.” — John Salberg
This week’s release of a scathing grand jury report in Pennsylvania detailing hundreds of previously unknown sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests has sent disturbing new questions reverberating across California and the country: How many more victims are out there and how many more abusive priests are left to be exposed?
The answer is a lot, survivors, lawyers, prosecutors and others said Wednesday as the report ripped open old wounds and had a victims’ group calling for a similar statewide investigation in California.
“We’ve been waiting for this grand jury report,” said Melanie Sakoda of the Bay Area chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. The group, she said, plans to ask California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to impanel a grand jury and examine abuses in the Golden State, where dioceses in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Stockton and elsewhere were roiled in scandal in the early 2000s, with dozens of priests exposed.
“We’re saying this needs to be done in more places. Certainly
Pennsylvania is not the only place this has happened or the only place that has hidden predators,” she said.
A spokesperson for Becerra’s office declined to address the request Wednesday, writing in an email that any comment could harm “a potential or ongoing investigation.”
A lawyer who has sued the church across the country, including on behalf of about 50 California victims, said such an investigation here and in other states “is critical” based on the Pennsylvania findings.
“It makes me sick to my stomach,” the lawyer, Stephen Crew of Portland, said. “I kind of thought we (knew) about the cases. But in Pennsylvania we’re talking about 300 priests and 1,000 victims, and that’s conservative. It’s shocking, I can’t believe it.
“The Catholic Church needs to come clean,” he said.
Dan McNevin, a longtime SNAP leader in the Bay Area who was abused by a priest in Fremont, said Wednesday that he believes the church has undercounted the number of priests it knows were abusers and that accurate numbers have never been made public.
The Pennsylvania report “was a more honest expression of what went on behind closed doors,” he said. The Oakland Diocese originally identified about 30 abusive priests, but this news organization later reported in 2008 there were about 60.
“It is no accident that a secular report got to a more accurate accounting, and as long as society relies on the church to self-report, we’ll be getting these low-ball estimates and continued denial,” McNevin said.
The head of the Oakland Diocese, Bishop Michael Barber, did not return a phone call Wednesday.
But California is far from alone in not knowing how many priests have preyed on children within its borders.
Only about 40 of the nearly 200 dioceses in the U.S. have released lists of priests accused of abusing children, and there have been only nine investigations by a prosecutor or grand jury of a Catholic diocese or archdiocese in the U.S., according to The Associated Press, which cited the website BishopAccountability.org. That’s even as the church has paid tens of millions of dollars in settlements and 15 dioceses and three Catholic religious orders have filed for bankruptcy to deal with thousands of lawsuits, the AP reported.
In San Jose, John Salberg, one of 12 men molested as boys in the 1970s by the late Rev. Joseph Pritchard at St. Martin of Tours in San Jose, said two emotions struck him when he saw the news flash about the Pennsylvania cases.
“It further validates what I did in 2002,” said Salberg, 53, who was among the first of the group to come forward then. “But the other half? I just wanted to throw up.”
He said he would have “begged, borrowed and stolen” to have a grand jury look into the abuse during the time his case was settled in 2005 in civil court against the San Francisco Diocese, which was in charge of San Jose parishes back then. Opening a grand jury investigation in California now could still do some good, he said.
“It just exposes it and leads to policy changes, which leads to protecting children and that’s the most important thing we can do,” Salberg said.
The impact on Catholics by new abuse cases in the church is immense, said Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University who has researched and written about the issue for 30 years.
“The church loses its moral authority,” he said. “Why should people listen to the church talk about moral issues, particularly sexual moral issues, when you’ve got this issue staring them in the face? It makes them say, ‘I’m not going to listen to you tell me how to live my life sexually.’ ”
Another problem that has hindered justice for abuse victims is the statute of limitations in both criminal investigations of priests and civil lawsuits against the church. Civil suits must be filed before the alleged victim’s 27th birthday. Limitations on criminal prosecution depend on the law at the time of the alleged offense. Although the statute of limitations is longer now, decades ago, when many of these abuses occurred, it was sometimes as short as a few years.
Marin County District Attorney Edward Berberian said his office had 15 to 20 criminal cases dismissed because of the statute of limitations at the height of the scandal. The same thing happened in Alameda County and elsewhere.
That’s not enough time, state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, who sponsored legislation in 2013 to change the law, said Wednesday. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the legislation.
A fair limit would be to allow victims until their midto late 40s, he said, an age when some finally fully understand what happened to them as children.
“No limit would be fair,” Beall said. “This is something that affects victims the rest of their lives.”