HARRISBURG (PA)
NPR
August 14, 2018
Updated at 4:33 p.m. ET
A long-awaited grand jury investigation into clergy sexual abuse in Pennsylvania was released Tuesday in an interim redacted form. The report detailed decades of alleged misconduct and cover-ups in six of the state’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses.
The roughly 900-page report, not including exhibits, is thought to be the most comprehensive of its kind and paints a horrid portrait of activity that occurred in the dioceses of Scranton, Allentown, Harrisburg, Greensburg, Erie and Pittsburgh, implicating 300 “predator priests” statewide who committed “criminal and/or morally reprehensible conduct.”
One priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg abused five sisters in a single family. Another, in the Diocese of Greensburg, impregnated a 17-year-old girl, married her, then divorced her months later.
A priest in the Diocese of Erie admitted to assaulting at least a dozen boys, yet was later thanked by the bishop for “all that you have done for God’s people.”
The grand jury said it reviewed a half-million pages of internal church documents and “secret archives” that were readily available to bishops. It found credible allegations by more than 1,000 victims, but it added, “We believe that the real number … is in the thousands.”
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