A.g. Shapiro Pushes for Legal Change after Clergy Abuse Report

WPXI
October 12, 2018

https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/ag-shapiro-pushes-for-legal-change-after-clergy-abuse-report/851889560

Pennsylvania's top prosecutor is appealing to legislators to change state law so that criminal and civil cases can be pursued in court in decades-old clergy abuse cases.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro is holding a news conference Friday at the court complex outside Philadelphia where Bill Cosby was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in 2004.

A state grand jury in August found that some 300 Roman Catholic priests had sexually abused children in cases going back decades and that church leaders systematically covered it up.

The Pennsylvania House has voted to give child sex abuse victims, in cases now too old to pursue, two years to file lawsuits. The Senate's Republican leaders are resisting that provision.

Shapiro also wants the Legislature to lift the statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions.