PENNSYLVANIA
Morning Times
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Throughout the 1990s, priests across Philadelphia and Altoona were molesting hundreds of children.
Grand jury investigation reports have detailed the horrific crimes of sodomy, rape, and countless other acts of depravity carried out in confessionals, sacristies, rectory bedrooms, locker rooms and cars on altar boys, members of choirs and legions of other children across parishes.
Across Catholic communities, few parents suspected such an unthinkable travesty, investigators concluded, but there were some who did.
Scores — if not hundreds — of parents and individuals in the state’s Catholic Church communities called Pennsylvania’s ChildLine hotline throughout those years to report that they suspected a priest of molesting a child, according to former Childline staffers.
Restricted by weak laws, the clerks and counselors who staffed the hotline could do little to help the callers or the possible victims. All they could do was to alert local law enforcement officials — the very people who, according to a recent state grand jury report, often ignored or colluded with church officials to hide the abuse.
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