On 22 September 2005, Philadelphia's CBS affilitate KYW reported:

The leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, including two former archbishops, actively concealed sexual abuse by priests for decades, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its priests because of the constraints of state law, according to grand jury findings released Wednesday.

Following the nation’s longest-running grand jury probe into priest abuse, the scathing report documents assaults on minors by more than 60 priests since 1967, and alleges that former archbishops Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Cardinal John Krol covered up the abuse.

“To protect themselves from negative publicity or expensive lawsuits—while keeping abusive priests active—the cardinals and their aides hid the priests’ crimes from parishioners, police and the general public,” the report stated.

State laws, including legal time limits, prevented prosecutors from filing charges, the report said. The grand jury also explored the possibility of charges against the archdiocese, but said the organization could not be prosecuted because it is an unincorporated association rather than a corporation. [read the full article and watch the video report here]

Acrobat/PDF files

The Grand Jury Report
Appendix A: Catalogue of Sexually Abusive Priests
Appendix B: List of Assignments of Sexually Abusive Priests
Appendix C: Archdiocese Priest Biographical Profiles [parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Appendix D: Selected Documents [parts 1, 2]
Appendix E: Glossary of Terms
Appendix F: Articles From Other Jurisdictions [parts 1, 2]

These are the kinds of things that Archdiocese priests did to children:

• A girl, 11 years old, was raped by her priest and became pregnant. The Father took her in for an abortion.

• A 5th-grader was molested by her priest inside the confessional booth.

• A teenage girl was groped by her priest while she lay immobilized in traction in a hospital bed. The priest stopped only when the girl was able to ring for a nurse.

• A boy was repeatedly molested in his own school auditorium, where his priest/teacher bent the boy over and rubbed his genitals against the boy until the priest ejaculated.

• A priest, no longer satisfied with mere pederasty, regularly began forcing sex on two boys at once in his bed.

• A boy woke up intoxicated in a priest’s bed to find the Father sucking on his penis while three other priests watched and masturbated themselves.

• A priest offered money to boys in exchange for sadomasochism – directing them to place him in bondage, to “break” him, to make him their “slave,” and to defecate so that he could lick excrement from them.

• A 12-year-old, who was raped and sodomized by his priest, tried to commit suicide, and remains institutionalized in a mental hospital as an adult.

• A priest told a 12-year-old boy that his mother knew of and had agreed to the priest’s repeated rape of her son.

• A boy who told his father about the abuse his younger brother was suffering was beaten to the point of unconsciousness. “Priests don’t do that,” said the father as he punished his son for what he thought was a vicious lie against the clergy.

Here are some incidents that exemplify the manner in which the Archdiocese responded to the sexual abuse of its most vulnerable parishioners:

• The Archdiocese official in charge of abuse investigations described one abusive priest as “one of the sickest people I ever knew.” Yet Cardinal Bevilacqua allowed him to continue in ministry, with full access to children – until the priest scandal broke in 2002.

• One abusive priest was transferred so many times that, according to the Archdiocese’s own records, they were running out of places to send him where he would not already be known.

• On at least one occasion Cardinal Bevilacqua agreed to harbor a known abuser from another diocese, giving him a cover story and a neighborhood parish here because the priest’s arrest for child abuse had aroused too much controversy there. Officials referred to this sort of practice as “bishops helping bishops.”

• A nun who complained about a priest who was still ministering to children – even after he was convicted of receiving child pornography – was fired from her position as director of religious education.

• A seminarian studying for the priesthood who revealed that he himself had been abused as an altar boy was accused of homosexuality – and was dismissed from the diocese. He was able to become a priest only by relocating to another area.

• When the Archdiocese did purport to seek psychological evaluation of a priest, the primary tool for diagnosis was “self reporting” – in other words, whether the abuser was willing to admit that he was a pedophile. Absent such a “diagnosis,” the Archdiocese declined to treat any priest as a pedophile, no matter how compelling the evidence.

• Even when admitted, the abuse was excused: an Archdiocese official comforted one sexually abusive priest by suggesting that the priest had been “seduced” by his 11-year-old victim.

• An Archdiocese official explained that the church could not discipline one especially egregious abuser because, as the official put it, he was not a “pure pedophile” – that is, he not only abused little boys; he also slept with women.

• When one priest showed signs of seeking penance from his victims, the church-run “treatment” facility urged Archdiocese officials to move him to another assignment away from the victims – in other words, transfer him before he apologizes again.

front page | index + search
about | contact | blog | donate