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	2003 Grand Jury Report Bishopaccountability.org March 30, 2011 http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2003_09_25_First_Philadelphia_Grand_Jury_Report.pdf [pdf] In nearly all cases, the Archdiocese did not report to law enforcement officials the allegations it received that priests had sexually abused children. Monsignor Lynn testified that the Archdiocese chose not to notify law enforcement, based upon its view that it was only required to do so if the violated child him or herself reported the assault to them. He claimed that if the child's parent Or some other interested adult notified them that a priest was abusing or had abused a child, they had no legal obligation to notify civil authorities. We are appalled that they put children at risk based upon such a technical interpretation of a statute that was intended to protect society's youngest members. As a result of the Archdiocese's failure to report these offenses, hundreds of allegations that priests sexually abused children were not investigated by law enforcement officials and scores of abusers escaped accountability for their crimes. We find that had the Archdiocese reported these allegations to law enforcement officials, countless children would have been spared the mghtmare of priest sexual molestation: perpetrators, whether or not arrested and convicted of their crimes, would have known that they could not rely upon the Archdiocese to conceal their perversions, and parents would have been alerted to the risks of allowing anyone, including supposedly celibate priests, from having unfettered access to their children. The Archdiocese also failed to notify even the parishioners that a priest assigned to their parish had admitted to sexually molesting a parish child, thereby depriving the community of the opportunity to find additional child victims, and protect children from further abuse. In many cases perpetrators who were transferred to another assignment continued to abuse children from their prior assignments. Due to the failure to notify the community, many parents were at a loss to understand the personality changes and behavioral problems manifested by their children that resulted from the trauma of sexual abuse. The Archdiocese failed to conduct even its own investigation to determine if the accused priest had abused or was abusing other children in the parish. We find that after being removed from his parish or assignment, an accused priest was generally sent for a mental health evaluation at an Archdiocese owned and operated mlental health facility or other Catholic facility where the Archdiocese believed it could influence the evaluation. We reviewed Archdiocesan documents indicating that in many cases Archdiocesan managers songht mental health evaluations, not primarily to diagnose and treat priests who sexually abused children but to show that they had "acted responsibly" to provide justification for retuming the accused priests to ministry: the Archdiocesan managers could claim that they relied upon "experts" if their decisions to allow the accused cleric continued access to children were ever challenged. Based upon expert testimony we heard we also find that in many cases the mental health facilities the Archdiocesan managers selected either lacked adequate diagnostic expertise or chose not to employ available and necessary forensic testing. We find that these practices endangered the safety of children. Moreover, we find that the Archdiocese frequently failed to provide the treatment facility with complete information about the allegations of abuse or the alleged abuser, in some cases omitting critical information about the priest's sexually inappropriate or abusive behavior. At least in part as a result of the Archdiocese's influence over the treatment facilities and its deliberate withholding of relevant information concerning the allegedly abusive priest, we find that in most cases predator priests- including those who admiued having sexual contact with multiple children - received psychological evaluations declaring that they were of little or no risk to children and could return to ministry. In many cases, Archdiocesan managers then reassigned the accused abuser to an unsuspecting parish or assignment. In these instances, they intentionally declined to tell the pastor of the new parish or any other person in authority in the new assignment (including those supervising the transferred priest) that the priest had been accused of sexually abusing minors. This was so even when the priest had admitted. or was believed to have committed, the abese or had been accused by multiple victims. We find that these practices jeopardized the safety of children.
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