PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review
BY BRAD BUMSTED | Tuesday, March 8, 2016
HARRISBURG — A deputy attorney general requested a grand jury investigation of child sexual abuse allegations against Altoona-Johnstown area Catholic priests in January 2013, but superiors turned him down, the Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday.
It was rejected about a year before a grand jury investigation was initiated based on a stronger case referred by Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan, said Chuck Ardo, spokesman for Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.
Ardo confirmed that Deputy Attorney General Daniel Dye requested a grand jury investigation the month Kane was sworn into office based on a referral late the previous year from Callihan on a case involving child abuse allegations against the Rev. George Koharchik.
He was later called a “child predator” in a grand jury report released last week that found hundreds of victims had been abused by as many as 50 priests over 40 years in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. No one was charged as a result of expired statutes of limitations, deaths and reluctant witnesses. The grand jury investigation began in April 2014.
“There’s no question” the Attorney General’s Office could have used the 2013 referral from Callihan to launch a grand jury investigation, said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Why it did not do so remains unclear, she said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.