The Pennsylvania Senate continues to fail child sexual abuse victims

Lancaster OnLine
November 11, 2018

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In this Aug. 14, 2018 file photo, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaks at a news conference at the Capitol in Harrisburg. Last week, Shapiro restated his belief that past victims of child sexual abuse deserve the right to seek justice in court.

As we noted last month, the Pennsylvania Senate so far has failed to act on Senate Bill 261, which would eliminate the criminal statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, and give future victims until age 50 to press civil claims. The House approved a version of Senate Bill 261 in September that included an amendment from Democratic state Rep. Mark Rozzi, which would provide a two-year retroactive window during which victims of past child sexual abuse could seek justice in civil court. But senators, led by Republican Senate Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, balked at passing the bill with that amendment.

The state Senate has just one more scheduled session day this year, and that’s Wednesday.

The final session day generally is reserved for unofficial matters, but Republican state Sen. Ryan Aument, of Landisville, has said he sees no reason why a vote on Senate Bill 261 couldn’t be taken on that day.

And either chamber of the General Assembly can meet before midnight Nov. 30, when the two-year legislative session formally ends.

Aument issued a statement last month, calling on the Senate to refrain from adjourning its 2017-18 legislative session until agreement on a remedy for victims could be reached. It apparently was to no avail.

It seems that Scarnati and company are determined not to listen to voices of reason. They seem utterly lacking in compassion — and any sense of shame.

Their inability to pass this vital legislation came after the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report that found that 301 “predator priests” in six Roman Catholic dioceses had abused more than 1,000 children over seven decades — and that bishops and other church officials had systematically covered up the abuse.

The Senate’s failure to act still is hard for us to comprehend.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who came under repeated fire in the grand jury report for his handling of abuse allegations when he served as bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. The U.S. Department of Justice launched its own investigation. Other states have done the same.

And the Pennsylvania Senate bickered and basically ran out the clock.

Meanwhile, the state’s Catholic dioceses — including the Diocese of Harrisburg, which encompasses Lancaster County — have moved to set up victim compensation funds, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

This seems noble, but it’s actually an effort to protect church assets. The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference — the public affairs arm of the state’s Catholic bishops — has lobbied hard against a retroactive window that would give victims the opportunity to sue the church for the terrible harm they suffered as children.

Ben Andreozzi, a lawyer who represents alleged victims of priestly abuse, told AP that the biggest drawback to a compensation fund is that “it does not force the institution to come clean with all the information that it has regarding the abuse.”

In a statement released Thursday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said it’s now clear that the dioceses acknowledge the grand jury’s harrowing findings were accurate.

But the grand jury, he noted, “recommended that victims deserve their day in court — not that the church should be the arbiter of its own punishment. These undefined compensation funds do not give a pass to lawmakers — the Legislature should return to Harrisburg, do their jobs,” and pass the grand jury’s recommended reforms.

We strongly agree.

And if the Senate doesn’t feel that the suffering of hundreds of child sexual abuse victims is important enough to take up any day this month, we fervently hope its members, returning and new, come to Harrisburg in January prepared to finally make things right.

The urgency remains. Any momentum gained in recent months must not be allowed to ebb away.

In last week’s Sunday LNP, staff writer Junior Gonzalez reported that an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people experience domestic abuse in Lancaster County each year, according to advocates at Domestic Violence Services of Lancaster County.

That number stunned us.

As Christine Gilfillan, director of DVS, told Gonzalez, “Most people think of domestic violence as physical abuse. Just as often, it’s emotional, psychological, financial, sexual abuse or some combination thereof.”

Abuse in any form is devastating.

Only 10 percent of those 15,000 to 20,000 victims seek services from DVS, Gonzalez reported. The stigma of domestic violence keeps many victims from reporting abuse.

Even applying for a protection from abuse order can be daunting.

“There are barriers where you don’t reach out ... for things that are happening in your home,” Gilfillan said. “Once you reach out and involve a social service agency, even worse, law enforcement, it’s not in your home anymore — it’s out in your community.”

There should be no shame in seeking help. As Gilfillan writes in today’s Perspective section, domestic violence no longer is viewed as a private matter, but rather as a “public health epidemic with vast physical, emotional, social, economic and other impacts.”

DVS works to help domestic violence victims understand “that they are not alone, the abuse is not their fault, and their responses to the trauma they’ve suffered are normal trauma responses,” Gilfillan said. “We are here to help.”

We can do our part by bringing the subject out into the open — by shattering the myths that surround it, by dispelling the stigma that keeps it in the shadows.

We need to talk to our children about what healthy relationships look like, and teach them to be wary of extreme jealousy, victim-blaming, controlling behavior, explosive temper and other signs of abusive behavior.

And when victims reveal that they’re terrified of people in their lives whom everyone else finds charming, we need to believe them.

As the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence notes on its website, abusers “come from all groups, all cultures, all religions, all economic levels, and all backgrounds. They can be your neighbor, your pastor, your friend, your child’s teacher, a relative, a coworker — anyone. It is important to note that the majority of abusers are only violent with their current or past intimate partners.”

According to the coalition, one study found that 90 percent of abusers “do not have criminal records and abusers are generally law-abiding outside the home.”

The coalition’s website at ncadv.org offers a wealth of such information. It’s worth visiting. So, too, is the website of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence (pcadv.org).

Information is power of the best and healthiest kind. Armed with it, we can help to prevent domestic violence — and learn how to help those seeking to safely escape it.