Victims of clergy abuse across Pa. brace for 'very bad stories' in huge grand jury report

After nearly two years of investigating sexual abuse of children within six Catholic dioceses across Pennsylvania, a grand jury is getting close to issuing its report.

State Rep. Mark Rozzi, a survivor of clergy abuse and an advocate for statute of limitations reform, has told The Morning Call and PennLive that the grand jury investigation would be wrapping up this month or next.

Rozzi’s office did not respond to a request for comment on this matter.

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, who has worked with clergy abuse survivors for more than 30 years and who is familiar with the statewide grand jury report, said Wednesday that its release is "imminent," though he didn't know exactly when the report would be issued.

Story continues after some background and one woman's personal account.

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Doyle said he expects the report will answer how many victims of clergy abuse and how many perpetrators of clergy abuse there have been over the past 50 or so years in the six dioceses being investigated. That information will then be compared to the information and the numbers that the church has provided publicly over the years, Doyle said.

"The only way to really get to the bottom of what’s going on … is for a competent outside agency to complete an investigation, and what is crucial, is that this agency, in this case the attorney general of the state of Pennsylvania, be objective and be fearless in the sense that they’re not concerned about the object of the investigation, namely the Roman Catholic Church," Doyle said.

Fifty years ago, a priest could be caught outright sexually abusing a child and police and others would look the other way because of the church's status, Doyle said.

"The deference they used to afford them is gone," Doyle said. "Now they have to answer to the demands of justice."

With this investigation, Doyle said, "You’re going to find a lot of perpetrators and a lot of very bad stories about cover-ups." That said, Doyle noted that he hopes survivors of clergy abuse will find gratification in knowing "that the state believes and affirms that what happened to them is gravely serious and its so serious that it justified the … statewide grand jury."

Terry McKiernan with www.bishop-accountability.org, which has cataloged thousands of priests who have been accused of sexual abuse of children, said he believes the grand jury investigation of the six dioceses will be extensive.

“I think that this report is going to be a shocker,” McKiernan said. “Beloved monsignors, who nobody ever imagined would be involved in this kind of thing, are going to be involved.”

Sharon Tell who was sexually abused by Monsignor James McHale, a priest from the Allentown diocese for more than 20 years, said she testified before the grand jury in June 2016. McHale died in 1997. Tell said she reported the abuse to a priest serving in a Lancaster County parish in the 1980s.

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That priest, William Geiger, was among the priests with credible allegations of child sexual abuse named by the York Daily Record in its reporting in August 2016.

Tell said the experience of testifying before the grand jury was validating.

“I sat in the chair with the microphone, it was very scary,” she said of the 90 minutes or so that she testified. “They were very comforting, these people. Some of the people in the front row, right in front of me, as I was talking -- 'cause I was crying, not crying, smiling -- their emotions were right there with me … it was a feeling of ‘Oh my God, I’ve got 30 people-- finally, somebody is listening to me and believing me.”