PENNSYLVANIA
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Mar 7, 2016 by Rob Boston
Last week, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a damning grand jury report about the rampant sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese – and the failure of anyone in authority to stop it.
News of the report hit me hard. I was born and raised in Altoona. For 16 years I attended a Catholic church in that diocese. I spent eight years in a Catholic school appended to one of its churches.
The nuns occasionally punished us in ways that were inappropriate, but I never suffered the kind of abuse detailed in the report. Still, I felt like I’d been socked in the gut. As I read the report, I kept coming across the names of familiar towns, churches and people.
The report is not easy reading. It goes into explicit detail about the horrors inflicted on these children. Be aware of that if you decide to take a look.
I was especially disgusted by how the powers that be in both the church and the state failed the victims. If you’ve seen the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight,” you know how church officials reacted: They created, then hid, secret files on problem priests. They did not report them to authorities. They attacked the victims. They shipped molesters off to other parishes where, inevitably, the priests sought more victims.
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