PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Nancy Phillips, Mark Fazlollah and Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writers
Victims wept. So did jurors, hearing story after story of childhoods lost to rape and molestation by trusted priests.
The grand jury investigation of sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese became a grueling three years of outrage, anguish, frustration, legal sparring - and tears.
"To see a grown man cry, oh, it was very disturbing," said Rosalind Arrington, the grand jury forewoman.
The jurors and prosecutors, some of whom grew up in Catholic churches and parochial schools, were shaken as a disturbing picture emerged from church files: evidence that top church officials knew of the abuses, and covered them up.
"It's an experience that I think forever changes you," said Maureen McCartney, one of the prosecutors on the case, who is now a law professor at Temple University.