Silent Struggles: Decades later, sexual-assault victims tell their stories, pursue justice

Reading Eagle
June 26, 2016

http://www.readingeagle.com/news/article/decades-later-sexual-assault-victims-tell-their-stories-pursue-justice

Editor's note: This story contains explicit content.

The harrowing stories are each unique. They're set in different neighborhoods. They revolve around different characters. They outline different circumstances.But a common thread binds them together.Each begins with a child whose youth and innocence, they say, was ripped away by a man they trusted above all others and who wielded incredible power over their lives. And each ends with an adult, who decades later, is still grappling with the pain.As Pennsylvania and neighboring states consider whether to partially reopen a window for people sexually abused as children to seek legal justice, more abuse survivors are stepping out of the shadows to tell their stories.They seek to remind politicians that the wounds and scars left by abuse are very much part of the present.The proposal is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which supporters expect to remove part of the plan allowing some victims to sue for abuse that happened in the past.Many survivors said they were encouraged to come forward by renewed national focus on child sexual abuse."Spotlight," Hollywood's account of the 2002 Boston Globe investigation that first revealed systematic cover-ups of abuse by Catholic Church leaders, took top honors at the Academy Awards in February.Days later, a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a report detailing decades of abuse - and an effort to conceal it - in the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese.Church leaders remain among the most vocal opponents of the proposed overhaul of child sexual abuse law and have lobbied hard against it. They point to the reforms they put in place in the wake of cover-up scandals and say allowing now-expired lawsuits to move forward would punish today's Catholics for wrongdoings of the past.Abuse survivors and their advocates say organizations that shielded pedophiles and failed to protect children - whether in the past or present - should not be given a free pass. And they argue the legal reforms are needed to better protect children in the future.The three men profiled here are among the many alleged victims still waiting for justice but whose stories are mentioned in grand jury reports, court documents and lawsuits that were filed but blocked from advancing because the window for justice had closed.Like many in their shoes, they haven't had the chance to see their alleged abusers convicted of a crime as the narrow window for criminal charges - as well as the window for lawsuits - had long closed by the time they were able to come forward.They are just a small few of those with ties to the Berks and Tri-County areas. They are among the slim percentage of victims who have come forward, according to child trauma researchers.The lives of so many others, researchers say, have been claimed by suicide, overdoses and other diseases and conditions brought on by a life of pain.