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Philly.com- For more than two years, dozens of victims have filed into a secret grand jury room in Pennsylvania, faced a group of strangers, and recounted how they were sexually abused as children by Catholic priests, their rapes and molestation buried by church leaders.
One, a former Erie priest who testified that he was molested when he was a teenager, called the experience cathartic. Another victim did not fare well after testifying. She attempted suicide and from her hospital bed implored the grand jurors to complete their investigation and make their findings public, according to a source who had been briefed on her account.
Later this month, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro is expected to release a landmark report by that grand jury that will detail, in stark and stomach-turning terms, decades of abuse and cover-ups in every Catholic diocese in the state except Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown, which have already undergone such scrutiny.
It is, legal experts say, among the most expansive investigations into clergy abuse in the country, one that will provide a panoramic view into the church’s handling of the scandal, dating back decades, across most of the state.
According to one of the few court documents that has been made public, the case has drawn dozens of witnesses and nearly a half-million pages of internal church documents. It has homed in on alleged crimes and misconduct by “individuals associated with the Roman Catholic church, local public officials and community leaders” — and could implicate hundreds of people.
As a result, the more than 800-page report has become the target of an intense but secret legal battle, as a group of unnamed individuals have waged a fight under court seal to delay its public release.
