The Catholic church has in recent years become embroiled in a major ongoing sex scandal, as more evidence reveals how some clergy members have used their positions of power to abuse children and teenagers.

The most recent update in the Catholic church sex abuse scandal involves more than 1,000 individuals who have been identified as victims of sexual abuse in Pennsylvania Catholic churches.

A grand jury released a report in August over the Pennsylvania Catholic church sex abuse scandal, which looked into six of eight Pennsylvania dioceses. Sadly, the grand jury found that children had been molested by priests or church leaders in every single one of the dioceses it investigated—and that the abuse had been covered up extremely well.

If you or someone you love has suffered because of sex abuse by a Catholic priest or other church leader in Pennsylvania, you may be qualified to join a Catholic church sex abuse scandal lawsuit investigation.

The Grand Jury’s Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal Report

The grand jury that investigated the Pennsylvania Catholic church sex abuse scandal looked into the Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Scranton dioceses (districts under the leadership of a particular bishop). The other two dioceses have not been ignored; Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown were involved in a previous grand jury investigation.

The grand jury’s investigation found that more than 300 priests and other church leaders were involved in the Catholic church sex abuse scandal, committing sexual crimes against more than one thousand prepubescent children as well as teenage children.

“We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million pages of internal diocesan documents,” wrote the grand jury in its report. They also relied on witness testimony. “They contained credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records.”

The Catholic church sex abuse scandal was covered up by the abusers as well as others in the church who looked the other way, the report indicates. “All of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all,” they wrote.

The Pennsylvania Catholic church sex abuse scandal investigation was wide-ranging, looking into priests’ actions over the last seven decades. But not all of the instances of abuse were decades ago—the grand jury also found instances of priests sexually assaulting victims in just the last ten years.

To make a terrible situation even worse, the extensive coverup has allowed many instances of sexual abuse to pass the statute of limitations, meaning that the predators involved can no longer be prosecuted.

Even so, the grand jury included the names of “both the sex offenders and those who concealed them” found through their investigation. The grand jury members, who spent two years investigating this abuse, unanimously declared that their report should be released unredacted, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article. Though this is an unusual move, the panel objected to any attempts to “censor, alter, redact or amend” their document, preferring instead to make the content public.

“We listened as [the victims] poured out their hearts telling of the agony and torment they endured since being victimized,” wrote the panel of 20 members. “They had waited so long to be heard; they deserve to be heard and validated.”

In response to the investigation’s findings, the grand jury made a few recommendations:

• the statute of limitations should be discarded
• the window two-year window for civil lawsuits should be changed to by the time the victim reaches age 30
• current laws about penalties for those who fail to report child abuse should be more clear
• law enforcement should not be able to make non-disclosure or confidentiality agreements to make sex abuse lawsuits go away

If you or someone you love was sexually abused by a Catholic priest or other church leader in Pennsylvania, you may be able to join a Catholic church sex abuse scandal lawsuit. Filing a lawsuit cannot take away the pain and suffering caused by sexual abuse, but it can help to provide some monetary compensation.