HARRISBURG (PA)
Phillyburbs.com [Doylestown, PA]
January 25, 2023
By Bethany Rodgers and Bruce Siwy
“All the survivors that are working on this, we’re all in the same boat. We are mentally trapped in this moment until these legislators act on this.”
Before every interview she does, Lara Fortney-McKeever clasps a delicate key-motif bracelet around her wrist — a symbol of the years she and her sisters spent locked in silence about their childhood sexual abuse.
Even after the arrest of the parish priest who had groomed and molested Fortney-McKeever and four of her younger sisters, a gag order signed as part of a settlement with the Diocese of Harrisburg prevented them from speaking about it.
They finally broke their silence in 2018, she said, when then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a landmark grand jury report identifying more than 300 Catholic priests accused of sexually assaulting children in Pennsylvania. The Fortney sisters’ abuser was among those named in the 884-page document.
“We were stuck in this cage,” she remembers telling Shapiro at the time. “And you handed the key to unlock our chains.”
Since then, she’s pushed for a change to Pennsylvania law that would enable sexual abuse survivors to take perpetrators to court and perhaps find the release and validation that she experienced in 2018. The grand jury report, which spelled out the predatory priests’ crimes in black and white, should galvanize legislators to action, she thought at the time.
Nearly five years later, she’s still waiting. Though the Pennsylvania General Assembly this month seemed on the verge of taking action for childhood sexual abuse survivors, movement on the issue appears to have fallen casualty to political infighting and a dysfunctional House of Representatives.
The proposal under consideration would lift the statute of limitations for child sex abuse survivors for two years, allowing them to sue perpetrators and institutions guilty of covering up their crimes. To become law, the proposed constitutional amendment must pass the General Assembly in two consecutive legislative sessions and win the approval of Pennsylvania voters.
Advocates hoped lawmakers would give the amendment a final sign-off in a January special session and set it up for a statewide vote in the May primary.
But now, with the narrowly divided House of Representatives unable to coalesce around a common set of rules, lawmakers stopped gathering in session earlier this month. House Speaker Mark Rozzi last week announced he would conduct a statewide listening tour to try to break the logjam and build support for giving final passage to the constitutional amendment.
The stalemate leaves Senate Bill 1 — which includes a two-year litigation window for Pennsylvania’s survivors of sexual abuse — and any other potential movement on the topic in limbo.
For the constitutional amendment to appear on the May ballot, lawmakers must pass it by Friday and officials must advertise it in newspapers by Feb. 16, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.
“The General Assembly must act swiftly to make that possible,” Ellen Lyon, the state department’s deputy communications director, wrote in an email to the USA TODAY Network.
With that swift action seeming less likely by the day, survivors have begun to resign themselves to yet another delay and the probability that they’ll have to wait at least until the November election for the amendment to appear on the ballot.
“It’s just hard to watch their disappointment time and time again, because there are many who are really relying on their day in court,” said Mike McDonnell, an abuse survivor and spokesperson for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “It’s heart-aching to watch.”
‘How am I supposed to walk away?’
Shaun Dougherty, a Johnstown native and president of SNAP, first tried to report his childhood abuse to authorities at the age of 21, during a two-week break after finishing U.S. Navy boot camp.
Something about his enlistment oath was compelling him to speak up, to do what he could to prevent others from being victimized. It was then that he learned his case was past the statute of limitations — and that because the priest, George Koharchik, hadn’t yet been criminally charged, Dougherty couldn’t even speak publicly without risking a defamation lawsuit.
The silence weighed on him for years, he said.
Then, in 2012, the diocese removed Koharchik from active ministry in the wake of new allegations against him. Authorities asked any survivors to come forward for their investigation into the priest, and Dougherty for the first time was able to give his statement.
He got involved in advocacy and began working with state lawmakers, especially Rozzi and Rep. Jim Gregory, fellow survivors of childhood sexual assault.
There have been wins for him: The grand jury investigations and legislation that abolished the criminal statute of limitations for child sexual abuse cases.
But the fight for the two-year litigation window has stretched on and on, consuming years of his life.
Now, he’s 53.
“How am I supposed to walk away from this thing that I’ve hoped for my entire life?” he said. “All the survivors that are working on this, we’re all in the same boat. We are mentally trapped in this moment until these legislators act on this.”
A prolonged fight in Pennsylvania
In 2018, Dougherty and a friend sat around a restaurant table with Koharchik, the man they’d accused of molesting them as children. With permission from the two survivors, CBS News recorded the encounter using a hidden camera and captured the defrocked priest apologizing for the harm he’d caused.
That type of public acknowledgment is something many survivors don’t get, Dougherty said. Many face skeptics who accuse them of fabricating their stories — and they badly want something like the video they can point to.
McDonnell described having a similar experience when one of the priests he says abused him as a child in Norristown pleaded guilty to molesting two other victims. Seeing the defrocked priest handcuffed and sent to prison for his crimes was “one of the best days,” McDonnell said.
But McDonnell doesn’t speak about it often, he said, because so many people never get that feeling.
More might be able to share that experience, he said, if they get the opportunity to sue their perpetrators and force them to disclose the evidence corroborating their accounts.
“Therapists, peer support networks can say ‘I believe you, and I stand in solidarity with you,’ all they want,” McDonnell said. “But until a victim hears and actually sees the trail of destruction and they see their truth spelled on paper, they will not have any final validation.”
Survivor advocates also contend that the window will encourage people to come forward and identify predators who might otherwise continue to endanger children.
Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor and founder and CEO of the advocacy organization Child USA, said she’s been fighting for more than 15 years to get litigation windows passed in state legislatures. New York and New Jersey are among the states that have altered their statute of limitations laws to give survivors a chance to press their case in court.
Getting these laws over the finish line is never easy, but the battles in Pennsylvania have been notably lengthy and pitched, she said.
“Survivors have really suffered over the 17 years, because there has been hope, at times,” Hamilton said. “But this Legislature has always let them down.”
And when they finally seemed on the verge of a win in 2021, with the amendment expected to appear on the ballot that spring, the Pennsylvania secretary of state’s office failed to advertise it as legally required.
So they had to start all over again.
Now, McDonnell says the General Assembly is playing politics with the issue.
Senate Bill 1, the resolution that includes the constitutional amendment, also has two additional ballot referendums to require voter ID at polls and make all regulations meet legislative approval.
And while there is bipartisan support for the two-year window, the voter ID requirement is much more divisive, and McDonnell worries it could drag down the whole package.
Frayed friendships
Last summer, Dougherty, Rozzi, Gregory and another survivor met up with one another for a few rounds of golf.
Afterward, Dougherty hosted them at his home and grilled up some shrimp and ribeye steaks for the group. The Pennsylvania General Assembly was in recess, he said, and the four men just wanted to kick back and enjoy their time together.
“I can tell you this, I don’t think I’m gonna have Jim Gregory to play golf anytime soon,” said Dougherty, who blames the Republican lawmaker for helping fuel the recent political infighting that has bogged down the constitutional amendment.
Earlier this month, Gregory (R-Blair County) called for Rozzi (D-Berks County) to step down as House speaker, even though he’d nominated the Democrat to the role just days prior. Rozzi had promised to govern as an independent and not to caucus with House Democrats or Republicans — and Gregory contends that his longtime legislative ally had broken his pledge by failing to switch parties.
According to Gregory, Rozzi answered “yes” three different times when asked if he was leaving the Democratic Party. Rozzi’s office hasn’t responded to an interview request from the USA TODAY Network sent early this month.
Amid the partisan rancor, the House has been unable to agree on rules of operation, and the special session on the constitutional amendment stalled.
“You’d think after going up there for as many years as I’ve been going up … I wouldn’t be shocked anymore,” Dougherty said of the discord in Harrisburg. “I’m still shocked. I’m just dumbfounded.”
Gregory says he doesn’t blame Dougherty for being frustrated.
“As a victim myself who has nobody that I can take to court to sue civilly, I do this for nothing other than to try and take something horrible that happened in my life and be able to turn it into a blessing, to help these people,” Gregory said. “I would ask him (Dougherty) not to blame me for feeling frustrated, myself, that the work I’ve done to try and make a difference has been put into such a difficult point.”