According to a newly released report from an NBC News affiliate, the U.S. Catholic Church paid lobbyists $5 million in Pennsylvania alone to prevent victims of the Catholic sexual abuse scandal from filing lawsuits.

According to an NBC report, the Catholic Church spent a total of $10.6 million to lobbyists to fight legal reforms that would lengthen the amount of time victims had to come forward and file civil claims throughout eight states in the northeastern U.S. NBC found out half of that money was spent on lobbyists in the state of Pennsylvania, where current laws give victims of sexual abuse until the age of 50 to come forward and until the age of 30 to file a civil claim.

NBC alleges the Catholic Church paid to keep the Pennsylvania law from better serving victims of sexual abuse.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has been lobbying to extend the statute of limitation laws ever since a grand jury found more than 300 priests had been accused of abusing more than 1,000 children over decades across the state.

AG Shapiro told NBC, “The extensive lobbying by the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania against the reforms recommended by the Grand Jury proves what I have said all along: The Church cannot be trusted to police itself.”

He went on to say “it’s reprehensible” that the Catholic Church is spending millions of dollars to fight the reforms instead of supporting the victims of the Catholic sex abuse scandal.

The Catholic Church’s lobbying efforts against changing the statute have been led by Bishop Ronald W. Gainer of Harrisburg, who is also the president of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference.

Grand Jury Broke Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal

In August 2018, AG Shapiro announced the results of a Pennsylvania Grand Jury investigation into Catholic sex abuse allegations.

The report covered six of the eight dioceses in the state. At least 301 priests were named and more than 1,000 victims identified in what the New York Times called “the broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.”

Perhaps thousands more victims’ records were either lost or destroyed or the victims have never come forward, says the report on clergy sex abuse.

The grand jury said they found that church leaders helped hide the fact that priests were raping little children, both boys and girls, for decades.

Church officials had their own way of dealing with abusive priests. Once allegations of child sexual abuse began to swirl around a priest, the clergyman would be transferred to another parish where no one knew him or of the allegations.

In other cases, the church used a different “playbook for concealing the truth,” in the words of the grand jury. The word “rape” was off-limits when discussing sexual behavior. Instead, the church used words such as “inappropriate contact.”

According to local radio station, WHYY, other priests suspected of committing sexual abuse were sent to Catholic Church-run facilities, including the St. John Vianney Center in Downington, Penn. When priests reported to the facility, the church’s parishioners were told the priest was having nervous issues or suffering from exhaustion and would return after treatment.

The grand jury said such treatment centers were simply ways to separate accused priests from their alleged participation in the Catholic sexual abuse scandal and allow them a way to deny the allegations, eventually returning to their ministries.

This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.