PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh City Paper
By Rebecca Addison
If you look at the legislation that Pennsylvania state Rep. Mark Rozzi has sponsored over the past year, you’ll notice a theme.
In February, Rozzi (D-Berks County) proposed a resolution designating April 2016 as “Sexual Assault Awareness Month.” In March, he co-sponsored a bill to add child sex abuse as an exception to sovereign-immunity laws. And his current fight to pass House Bill 1947 would eliminate the criminal statute of limitation on child sexual-abuse cases.
For Rozzi, sexual assault isn’t just another legislative issue. It’s the reason he ran for office in 2012. Rozzi was molested by an Allentown Diocese priest when he was 13.
After being molested, in the 1980s, Rozzi did his best to move on from the trauma. But he was spurred to take action in 2009 after a second childhood friend committed suicide; both of them had been molested by the same priest.
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