PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In compelling Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses to turn over as much as 70 years’ worth of records on sexually abusive priests, the state attorney general’s office is mounting what would be the most wide-ranging criminal investigation ever into scandal in the United States.
Diocese of Altoona-JohnstownAnd if history is any guide — in particular, the history of the , which was the subject of the initial two-year grand jury investigation that mushroomed into the statewide probe — here are a few things to expect in the coming months or years:
• Few if any people will be prosecuted, either the alleged abusers themselves or those who enabled them, due to the deaths of many potential defendants and the expiration of the statute of limitations that prohibits filing charges after several years.
• Many of the cases will be decades old.
• Many names of alleged abusers will already be public due to criminal or civil trials, but some new names may emerge.
• Internal church documents will show real-time decisions by bishops and other church officials in their own words — some of which may prove shocking and dismaying, others of which may even vindicate bishops’ handling of cases.
• Some documentation will be conspicuously absent, evidence of church policies providing for the purging of scandalous documents after a time, although some such documents are retained long after the fact.
• The investigations could yield an overall narrative over the years on how Catholic bishops handled case of abuse by priests, whose cases are often reported in isolation.
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