After ballot ad blunder, some seek a bill on abuse lawsuits

When she first heard the news, “it was just such a gut punch,” said Juliann Bortz.

The Lehigh County woman, like other survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, was stunned to learn this week that state officials failed to take a routine procedural step that would have gotten a proposed constitutional amendment to voters this year.

The failure to have published the amendment last year in newspapers around the state, a simple step required under the state constitution, led to the resignation of Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and to further delays in a yearslong effort to create a temporary window in the statute of limitations involving sexual abuse. The window would enable victims of abuse to sue Catholic dioceses or other organizations that they deem responsible for enabling or covering up abuse that took place years or decades ago.

“I’ll be OK, but where do we go from here?” Ms. Bortz said. “This fight is getting tiring.”

Still, she and other advocates are redoubling efforts to persuade Pennsylvania legislators to approve the window through ordinary legislation rather than a state constitutional amendment, which many of them thought was

unnecessary in the first place.

Ms. Bortz was among a group of abuse survivors from around the state who met with Gov. Tom Wolf by videoconference on Tuesday. They said he listened to their stories and pledged to find ways to fix the problem.

Rep. Mark Rozzi, one of the sponsors of the amendment and himself a survivor of clergy abuse, said: “There are solutions to this problem. We have to put them all on the table.”

Lawmakers had approved the constitutional amendment last year to create a twoyear window for lawsuits. They were moving toward approval this year, meeting the requirement that two consecutive legislative sessions approve an amendment before sending it to voters as early as this May.

Now, Mr. Rozzi said, there’s no plan to start from scratch with an amendment.

“Victims can’t wait another two years,” the Berks County Democrat said. “That solution is not on the table any more.”

Legislative efforts to create a window, years in the making, took on momentum after a 2018 statewide grand jury’s report detailed the history of sexual abuse by priests and cover-ups in six Catholic dioceses going back seven decades. The legislation fell short in 2018 as some opponents said it would violate due process under the constitution.

But Mr. Rozzi said he always believed the law could be passed without amending the constitution. “We’ve got to go back to our own caucuses and figure out where we can get the votes.”

He also wants to make sure there isn’t a way to get the measure on the ballot despite the state’s blunder. “We don’t want to leave any stone unturned,” he said.

“You have to wonder how it happened and why it happened,” he added. “My heart breaks for all victims who were waiting for this to happen.”

Legislative leaders are reviewing their options.

“The concerns in the past were that pursuing this measure through statute went against the Remedies Clause of the PA Constitution, meaning the law would not stand up to legal challenges,” said Jennifer Kocher, communications director for Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman. “All that has to be discussed.”

Mike Straub, communications director for House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, noted that the House passed similar legislation in the past with “massive bipartisan support.”

He called the publishing blunder a “massive failure under the Wolf administration” but added that “our caucus is working to determine the next best steps.”

Mr. Wolf, in his teleconference, “apologized to the individuals and he appreciated the opportunity to hear from the survivors,” said his press secretary, Lyndsay Kensinger. “The governor is committed to exploring all options to fix this error and prevent it from happening again.”

James Faluszczak, a former priest and abuse survivor in the Diocese of Erie, is counting on that. “He’s been a supporter and he’s been present to us,” he said. “I truly believe he feels this as a personal failure of his responsibility to us.”

Attorney Alan Perer, of Pittsburgh, who represents victims in legal claims against dioceses, said he hoped this week’s stunning news prompts lawmakers to act. “Maybe the time is ripe to pass it as a bill,” he said.

Ryan O’Connor, of Penn Hills, a survivor of abuse by a priest in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, said the bill needs to be passed — and those involved in the publishing failure held to account. Many state officials and lawmakers should have been paying attention, he said.

“This isn’t just ‘mea culpa,’” he said. “This is a royal screw-up. I find it very difficult to believe it was anything but intentional, because how can so many people drop the ball?”