Catholic League to AGs: Don't Stop with Catholic Church

Below is the text of a letter sent yesterday by the Catholic League to every Attorney General in the country. 

September 12, 2018

Dear Attorney General

In the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on the Catholic clergy, many states are considering a similar probe of offending priests. They should do so, with one caveat: they should also investigate the clergy of all other religions, private non-sectarian institutions, and public sector entities. Not to do so would be manifestly unjust and indefensible.

No attorney general or lawmaker would convene a grand jury on criminal behavior and then decide to focus exclusively on African American neighborhoods. They would have to include white-collar crimes, the kinds of acts that are mostly committed by affluent whites.

That is why it smacks of bigotry to single out the Catholic Church when investigating the sexual abuse of minors: We don't own this problem. Indeed, there is less of a problem today with this issue in the Catholic Church than in any societal institution, religious or secular.

For the last two years for which we have data, .005 percent of the Catholic clergy have had a credible accusation made against them. In the case of Pennsylvania, all the offending priests are either dead or have been thrown out of the priesthood. The same pattern exists elsewhere.

If you want to pursue molesters, you should begin by launching a grand jury probe of the public schools. This means they must be explicitly mentioned in any bill that would suspend the statute of limitations; otherwise they will be exempted under the antiquated doctrine of sovereign immunity. There are many good reasons why the public schools command scrutiny.

Consider two investigations of sexual abuse in the public schools. Published nine years apart, by two separate media outlets, they found that removing abusers from the teaching profession is very difficult.

In October 2007, the Associated Press (AP) published a series of articles, “Sexual Misconduct Plagues U.S. Schools,” that were based on its investigation. It found that between 2001-2005, 2,570 educators had their teaching credentials revoked because of sexual misconduct. It detailed 1,801 cases of abuse: more than 80 percent of the victims were students, and most of the offenders were public school teachers.

What happened to the molesters? “Most of the abuse never gets reported,” the AP said. Moreover, far too many of the offending educators were able to remain in the teaching profession. Often this was done by simply moving the “mobile molesters” to another school or district, a practice so widespread that it's called “passing the trash.”

In December 2016, USA Today published its own series on abuse in the public schools. It found that “passing the trash” was still the norm: abusive teachers were able to move to new teaching jobs, or to other employment working with youth.

USA Today found the same resistance to change as reported by AP: (a) “Administrators have pursued quiet settlements rather than public discipline” (b) “Unions have resisted reforms,” and (c) “Lawmakers have ignored a federal mandate to add safeguards at the state level.”

USA Today also found the same reasons why change proved elusive: (a) It cited “examples in every state” of secrecy agreements, many of which were “cemented in legally binding contracts” (b) most states refused to abide by a 2015 federal law requiring states to ban such secrecy agreements (only five states—Connecticut, Texas, Missouri, Oregon and Pennsylvania—had such bans in place), and (c) the federal government still “does not maintain a database of teachers who have sexually abused children.”

Regarding the last point, in 2009 Congress tried to rectify this by passing the Student Protection Act. It would have required the U.S. Department of Education to maintain a national database of educators terminated from a public or private school for sexual misconduct with a student. But, as USA Today found, it “died amid fierce opposition from national teachers organizations, which had concerns about due process for teachers accused of misconduct.”

In conclusion, if a grand jury investigation of Catholic dioceses is warranted, then fairness dictates that the public schools be subjected to one as well. Indeed, they should be your first priority.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

President

Shapiro's Grand Jury Report Charges No Crime

Attorney General Josh Shapiro has released a devastating account of child sexual abuse that includes over 300 priests and over 1,000 children. Even worse, it chronicles a systematic cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy. I hope it helps at least some of the victims find closure. But let me add the following caveats.

First, it is a report, not an indictment. Not a single of these hundreds of priests has been charged with anything. Though the torches and pitchforks are out, the grand jury has essentially admitted it is unable to prove even one crime.

Second, it is almost entirely old news, going back as far as the '60s. I could look any human institution and come up with a devastating account of how it has operated over the past 50 years. The number of corrupt officials in Lehigh Valley local government would number in the thousands, with crimes extending from bribery to illegal wiretaps to very real police brutality, in which confessions were quite literally beaten out of people.

Third, beware the motives of AG Josh Shapiro. He has that "lean and hungry look," as Caesar might say. He would like to be the next Governor, and could ride into office as the man who took on the Catholic Church without prosecuting a single one of these evil priests. That's quite an accomplishment.

Fourth, understand that many of the news accounts are going to be salacious and essentially unfair, while pretending objectivity. Nothing like a sex scandal to beef up sales.

Fifth, in the Allentown Diocese, all five DAs conducted an investigation in 2002, revealing much of the same information that has surfaced again 16 years later. At that time, the Allentown Diocese committed to notifying authorities whenever any allegations of child sexual abuse are made against a Catholic priest, no matter what church officials may think of the merits. DA John Morganelli said a few weeks ago that he believes the Diocese has lived up to its agreement.