Clergy try to scuttle report on sex abuse
Priests and other unnamed petitioners are claiming a grand jury and those involved with it breached medical confidentiality and made accusations without adequate evidence in a sealed report on sexual abuse in six Catholic dioceses.
About two dozen people have petitioned the state Supreme Court to challenge the report itself and the actions of those involved in the 40th statewide grand jury, its supervising judge and the office of attorney general, which oversaw the investigation.
Although legal briefs due Tuesday from the challengers weren’t immediately public, the Supreme Court gave some indications of what the challenges are about last week when it ordered lawyers on
both sides to present written arguments on them.
The challengers include current and former priests — and by the evidence made public so far, include some who were in a position of authority to recommend or warn about a priest’s suitability for work.
One petitioner says the report violates “no less than five statutory and constitutional prohibitions” and an alleged ethical violation by publicizing a medical/psychotherapeutic evaluation deemed “confidential.”
Another alleges the supervising judge, Norman A. Krumenacker III, failed in his duty to make sure the report is “supported by the preponderance of the evidence.”
The petition questions whether criticizing but not indicting people by name “is not for a purpose supported by the Investigating Grand Jury Act.”
The grand jury spent about two years investigating sexual abuse in the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Erie, Allentown, Harrisburg and Scranton. The office of Attorney General Josh Shapiro has until Friday to respond to the petitioners’ briefs.
The report was due for release last month, but the Supreme Court has ordered it remain sealed indefinitely while the petitioners get their chance to challenge it.
In one case, a petitioner identified only as “L.B.” is challenging the report’s implication that he “falsified” a document that enabled “a priest to endanger the welfare of children.”
The document declared a priest’s “suitability for service.” Such documents are often used when a priest from one diocese is seeking to do ministry in another, which seeks an assurance the priest isin good standing.
Another petition similarly involved an apparent supervisor. “D.D.” is challenging the report’s allegation that he “should have informed a school district that a priest was previously the subject of an ‘abuse or sexual misconduct investigation’ that ‘involved minor children.’”
And a petition from “J.S.” challenges the report’s contention that he did not report a sexual-misconduct allegation to a bishop “but rather told the victims’ mother to have her daughters contact him themselves.”
The documents give no further details into when the alleged events took place, or in which diocese.
A core to the challenges to the report centers on the Pennsylvania constitution’s guarantee to the right to a good reputation.
Several petitioners claim this is violated because the report deprives them of reputation without due process.
Judge Krumenacker has ruled that anyone criticized but not indicted by a grand jury has the legal right to file a written rebuttal with the report.
But the challengers want the court to rule on whether they have further rights to “see and challenge evidence presented against them” in a grand jury proceeding, according to a Supreme Court summary of one such challenge.
Another petitioner, T.S., challenges Judge Krumenacker for “determining that he lacked the authority to redact the report” — and if the law establishing investigative grand juries doesn’t give a supervising judge that right, whether the law violates the state constitution entirely.
Yet another petitioner, the estate of L.O., alleges the deceased person was improperly labeled an “offender.”