According to a June 9, 2019 Allied News article, the Catholic Church spent millions of lobbying dollars in Pennsylvania to fight legal reforms that would have benefited clergy sexual abuse survivors.

As indicated by the report, the Church has spent approximately $5.3 million over the last eight years on attempts to defeat bills in the Pennsylvania legislature that would extend the statute of limitations for survivors to pursue criminal or civil charges against clergy perpetrators or leaders that worked to protect them.

As indicated in a separate CBS article about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal posted three days earlier, Pope Francis is quoted as saying late last summer, “The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.”

This speech rang hollow to many sufferers in the light of the revelation of how much money has been spent to effectively silence adult survivors of clergy sexual abuse. The pope’s statement was in timing with a Pennsylvania grand jury report in which the names of 300 priests were publicized that had been credibly accused of the sexual abuse of minors over several decades.

Despite what the pope said, a determined effort to follow the money paints an entirely different picture of the priorities of the Catholic Church. A report was brought to light on Tuesday, June 4 in which it was noted that throughout the northeastern states, $10.6 million has been spent to fight legislation extending statutes of limitation laws for victims.

The report was commissioned by four law firms, according to a June 7, 2019 article in Huffington Post. The law firms were able to isolate Pennsylvania spending at $5,322,979, but the grand total of lobbying over Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island was in the order of $10,602,587 from 2011 to 2019.

The law firms involved in gathering the information purportedly were able to obtain the necessary data to run these numbers from public filings. The firms have represented approximately 300 adult survivors of clergy child sexual abuse across the nation, according to Huffington Post.

A partner in one of these firms says the lobbying clearly is at odds with the Church’s stated priorities of taking accountability for the actions of its leaders now and in the past and prioritizing the well-being of victims.

Despite the excessive spending to the contrary, statutes of limitations laws are changing one by one. New York had their new Child Victims Act signed into law in February of this year. Senate bill 477 in New Jersey was signed into law May 13.

While reform hasn’t passed in Pennsylvania or New Hampshire, other states in the Northeastern U.S. have pending bills that would amend statutes of limitation.

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