Survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy claim Kamala Harris did not do enough to prosecute their cases when she was San Francisco district attorney.

Victims said compared to Terence Hallinan, who was DA before Harris defeated him in the 2003 election, Harris did 'absolutely nothing.'

'It went from Terence Hallinan going hundred miles an hour, full speed ahead, after the Catholic Church to Kamala Harris doing absolutely nothing and taking it backwards hundred miles an hour,' Joey Piscitelli, a sexual assault survivor, who won a court case against his Catholic high school, told The Intercept.

But Harris' campaign told DailyMail.com the senator has been a 'staunch advocate' for sexual assault victims.

'Kamala Harris has been a staunch advocate on behalf of sexual assault victims, especially child sexual assault victims,' the campaign said in a statement. 'As a line prosecutor she took on notoriously difficult to prove child sexual assault cases, put predators behind bars and created a coalition to combat child exploitation. She then used her position as District Attorney to create the first unit focused on child sexual assault cases in the office's history.'

Survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy claim Kamala Harris did not do enough to prosecute their cases when she was San Francisco district attorney

Protesters stand in front of St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco in 2005 - when Harris was district attorney of the city

Several other victims told the news website that Harris's office refused to meet with them and declined to release files on clergy abuse.

Dominic De Lucca, a California resident who said he was raped by a local priest when he was 12 years old, claimed Harris wouldn't meet with him or release the files.

'I remember Kamala Harris,' he told The Intercept. 'She didn't want to have any meetings.'

He added: 'She wanted the public to think this is an issue that happened years ago, that it doesn't happen anymore. Let's just move on.'

Harris' campaign said the files weren't released because it would create a 'chilling effect' on cases being reported and threaten the privacy of victims.

'Senior attorneys in the DA's office, who were central to the prosecution of Catholic priests advised that records should not be released because it would create a chilling effect on other victims of sexual assault and to protect the privacy of victims involved. That same protocol was followed by the previous office and the decision was affirmed by an independent board that reviews sunshine requests,' the campaign told DailyMail.com

De Lucca said he believed it was the power of the Catholic Church in San Francisco that kept the files under lock and key.

'The Roman Catholic Church is very powerful and I think they didn't want to step on any toes, especially in San Francisco,' he told The Intercept.

Harris came into office a few years after the 2002 Boston Globe series on sexual abuse by priests in the Boston-area, a story that sparked world-wide consequences for the Catholic Church.

Her decisions on prosecuting the Catholic Church were questioned at the time.

SF Weekly, the local alternative paper, pressed her to release the clergy files in 2005.

And when Harris ran for California Attorney General in 2010, the issue of the clergy files resurfaced.

Her AG campaign told the SF Weekly at the time: 'District Attorney Harris focuses her efforts on putting child molesters in prison. We're not interested in selling out our victims to look good in the paper. When this case was brought under Terence Hallinan, prosecutors took the utmost care to protect the identity and dignity of the victims. That was the right thing to do then and it's the right thing to do now.'

And Elliot Beckelman, who worked as a prosecutor in the office under Harris and Hallinan, defended Harris' decision not release the files.

'It was my advice that the information not be disclosed. The principle for not turning over these files was the same under Hallinan's administration: the need to protect the privacy of the victims,' he told the SF Weekly in 2010.

Harris has made her prosecutorial experience one of her primary arguments for why she should take on President Donald Trump in 2020.

'My whole life, I've only had one client: the people,' Harris said in January when she formally launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

'Fighting for the people meant fighting on behalf of survivors of sexual assault - a fight not just against predators but a fight against silence and stigma.'

Kamala Harris has made her prosecutorial experience one of her primary arguments for why she should be the Democratic nominee

Her record on the Catholic Church was also an issue when she ran for attorney general; she is seen here in 2013 in that role

And she said at a CNN town hall in Iowa: 'My career has been based on an understanding, one, that as a prosecutor my duty was to seek and make sure that the most vulnerable and voiceless among us are protected. And that is why I have personally prosecuted violent crime that includes rape, child molestation and homicide.'

This isn't the first time Harris' time in the district attorney's office has come under question.

In 2004, shortly after she took over in the DA's office, she declined to pursue the death penalty for a gang member accused of shooting San Francisco cop Isaac Espinoza - despite heavy political pressure from the police union.

Harris had campaigned on the promise never to pursue the death penalty and stuck to that during the case.

The killer was sentenced to life in prison.

And, on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported on the failure of Harris' office to adopt a 'Brady policy' early on - which is a policy where a DA's office discloses past misconduct by law enforcement in order to help ensure defendants received a fair trial.

Progressive prosecutors, which Harris claims to be, implement the policy, which is disliked by police unions, whose support Harris had lost after the Espinoza case.

In 2010, her office came under fire for not having a 'Brady policy,' which was then implemented.

Harris told the Journal in a statement: 'It took too long to implement, but I am proud we implemented a Brady policy in the D.A.'s office that was later called "a model for other jurisdictions"' by the California Supreme Court.