Missouri fifirst state to announce probe into clergy abuse claims
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said 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 firsts tate to publicly announce such an inquiry after the searing Pennsylvania grand jury report released last week, which documented a wave of abuse sand cover ups spanning decades and involving more than 300 Catholic priests.
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 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,” Hawley wrote in a letter to 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 offiffice would put together “a team of experienced attorneys and career prosecutors to ensure a vigorous, searching and comprehensive inquiry.”
He said this team would review documents as well as interview alleged victims and people who may have witnessed alleged abuses. Hawley’s offiffice 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 offiffice 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.
The grand jury report released by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro last week — 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 t he world. Pope Francis this week wrote an unprecedented letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics in which he said the church had f ailed to deal with “crimes” against children. “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,” he wrote.
Experts say the report could help drive reforms to statutes of limitations, which Shapiro said hindered the ability of law enforcement offifficials to pursue charges in cases the grand jury examined. Survivors have called f or 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.”