15 Aug Scranton Sex Abuse Bombshell

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Attorney General released a grand jury report documenting seven decades of child sexual abuse in the Keystone State’s Roman Catholic churches. Over 300 accused priests are listed by name.  The grand jury alleges that church leaders, the Diocese of Scranton among them, covered up the scope and frequency of these crimes to protect abusers and the church’s reputation.

The report, the result of a two year investigation, is the first of its kind to examine abuse in the Catholic Church on a statewide level.  It reviewed 500,000 pages of documents turned over by the Dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton and identified over 1,000 children – most of them male, some female, many now grown – who had been violated by clergy members.

The October 1986 letter from then Bishop Timlin to Father Thomas D. Skotek, who the Bishop knew had raped and impregnated an minor girl.

“The Diocese of Scranton also chose to defend its clergy abusers over its children,” wrote the panel.  The leadership of Bishop Emeritus James Timlin comes in for specific criticism.  Timlin, who retired in 2003 just as abuse allegations began to consume the wider church, is found to have taken the side of the abusers over the children they harmed.

“This is a very difficult time in your life, and I realize how upset you are. I too share your grief,” wrote the Bishop in a letter regarding the 1980s case of Father Thomas Skotek, who had intercourse with a minor girl and subsequently took her to get an abortion.  The grief Timlin wrote of was not for the victim. The words are addressed to an “upset” and apparently grief stricken Father Skotek.

“I can’t believe I feel guilty for missing mass on Sunday,” a stunned parishioner wrote on Facebook shortly after the news was announced. Of Timlin’s covering up and interfering with law enforcement, another woman wrote, “How dare the man [Timlin] stand before us, confirming our faith, when he was doing these things.”

The grand jury details how accused priests were shuffled by superiors from congregation to congregation, sometimes out of state for “rehabilitation,” but almost always returning to local churches where they continued to prey on  children.

In a statement, the Diocese of Scranton said, “Bishop Bambera offers his deepest apologies to the victims who have suffered because of past actions and decisions made by trusted clergymen, to victims’ families, to the faithful of the Church, and to the community at large.”

The report reads, “Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records. We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward- is in the thousands.”

In addition to documenting the abuse and diocesan response, the grand jury offered recommendations to prevent future abuse.  These include lifting the statute of limitations in civil and criminal cases and implementing a window for older victims to file suit against the Catholic Church and abusers.

The Catholic Church leadership oppose amending the statute.

For the full text of the report, which is graphic in nature, please click here.