Innocence Abused: A Lethal Combination Of Church And State Fails Pennsylvania's Children
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Mon Mar 07, 2016 at 04:10:09 PM EST

Last week, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a damning grand jury report about the rampant sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese - and the failure of anyone in authority to stop it.

News of the report hit me hard. I was born and raised in Altoona. For 16 years I attended a Catholic church in that diocese. I spent eight years in a Catholic school appended to one of its churches.

The nuns occasionally punished us in ways that were inappropriate, but I never suffered the kind of abuse detailed in the report. Still, I felt like I'd been socked in the gut. As I read the report, I kept coming across the names of familiar towns, churches and people.

The report is not easy reading. It goes into explicit detail about the horrors inflicted on these children. Be aware of that if you decide to take a look.

I was especially disgusted by how the powers that be in both the church and the state failed the victims. If you've seen the Academy Award-winning film "Spotlight," you know how church officials reacted: They created, then hid, secret files on problem priests. They did not report them to authorities. They attacked the victims. They shipped molesters off to other parishes where, inevitably, the priests sought more victims.

In Altoona, Johnstown and in other communities, government officials simply refused to act. They were completely deferential to the church. The report discusses a priest named Leonard Inman who was known to be soliciting boys for sex. Altoona police began to investigate, but all it took was some pressure from the diocese, and they backed off.

"The Grand Jury finds that Inman was actively engaging in prostitution and oral intercourse with minors at Cathedral of Blessed Sacrament Altoona," reads the report. "Altoona Police were aware of allegations and investigated the matter. The Diocese sought to protect the image of the institution rather than protect children or hold Inman accountable. No charges were ever filed in part due to the undue influence of the diocese over local officials."

Things were so bad in Altoona and Johnstown, the report asserts, that church officials actually had the power to pick candidates for certain municipal jobs. At one point, a law-enforcement official asked why there was no follow-up in an especially egregious case of clerical abuse in Cambria County. A judge told him, "You have to understand, this is an extremely Catholic county."

This is a pattern that has played out in other parts of the country. In Orleans Parish, La., a priest was accused of molesting several teenage boys in the 1980s. Investigators brought the matter to the attention of Harry Connick Sr., the local district attorney. Connick declined to press charges, later admitting that he didn't want to embarrass "Holy Mother the Church."

People sometimes ask us at Americans United why we are so intent on separating church and state. Religion, some of our critics assert, is a good thing. Why shouldn't it be able to help out the government and vice versa? What's the harm in letting church and state get a little closer?

Our usual answer is often along the lines of, "That's not what the founders intended." But there is another answer, one that is hard for many Americans to face but is nonetheless true: Sometimes religious groups do things that are not good - things that are, in fact, evil, vile and disgusting.

When a church does these things, when its top officials knowingly violate the law as surely as its clergy violated the bodies of innocents in Pennsylvania, only one institution has the power and the resources to hold it accountable. That institution is the state.

Yet when church and the state are linked, when they are in partnership, when they are reliant on one another and when a mutual dependency is fostered, the government can't assume the aggressive stance that's necessary to enforce the law. So the law is laid aside and eyes are turned away - even as more and more kids are victimized.

That's a difficult lesson. It's one my hometown has had to learn. We must take steps to ensure that no other communities are forced to learn it anew. 




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I have begun to wonder if there is a single diocese in the entire Roman Catholic Church unaffected by this awful practice of protecting bad priests. I know that most Protestant denominations are equally guilty of protecting bad ministers, of course, but I do not think the scale is so massive. Not that scale matters; a bad act is a bad act and all of us bear responsibility for holding our leaders accountable. That includes removing the criminal statute of limitations so that crimes can be prosecuted, not swept under the cover of time passed.

I lived through the Boston revelations: the first trial in 1990-91, then the Spotlight investigations and subsequent upheavals throughout the Boston area. I had parishioners in several churches who knew victims or attended churches as young people where men named in the investigations served as priests. The church I was serving at the time of the Boston Globe articles experienced an influx of disaffected Roman Catholics in the year after the articles.

The UCC congregation I serve now, within the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, doesn't have many former Roman Catholics, but I wonder if we, too, will see visitors and perhaps growth for all the wrong reasons because of these revelations. Of course, I also wonder how much more the Church Universal will suffer because of misused and abused authority by its leaders.

by RevRuthUCC on Sun Mar 13, 2016 at 03:01:48 PM EST

in areas where the dominionist-but-not-Roman-Catholic churches dominate.  We've listened to too many middle-aged (and younger but at least in their 20s) women over the years who were raped as little girls by their pastors (always fundamentalist/dominionist) and either they made the mistake of asking for help from family or within the church (thus being ostracized and labeled "Jezebels") or their statements were ignored - or they were too terrified of punishment/retaliation to say anything (yeah, the churches are that powerful and many people recognize the reality of Christian retaliation).  You can also hear some really horrific stories from the Christian "mission/boarding schools" set up to "teach" (forcibly assimilate) Native American youth.  In that case, I'm not aware of a single denomination who didn't bear guilt for exploitation and abuse of youth - and the more conservative/fundamentalist the church, the worse the abuse.

In this hellhole, the politicians are holding prayers before meetings - and those that try to get it stopped or complain face arson and poisoned pets (as I've related in some of my posts and as we experienced for defending teaching evolution, and calling for treating the poor and minorities decently and equally).

From what we've read and heard, I think that it's tied to the idea of top-down authority... as the saying goes "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".


by ArchaeoBob on Tue Mar 08, 2016 at 12:39:09 PM EST


Religious/Community/Political/Business or sports community's where the "fan support" is so great, that their hero's are beyond being held accountable for their actions makes this crime (and sexual abuse of a minor is a criminal offense) all the more serious. Many lives have been destroyed - the rebellion/depression/drug use/inability to concentrate on school or work and many other symptoms continue long after the time period when the actual abuse was taking place. Even with a support group, counseling and when the abuser is held accountable - many suffer long difficult roads simply to survive. Unlike violent rape or a mugging which often is a one time violation - this abuse of power happens repeatedly, crushing young lives in it's wake. Is our church - our community - our political or sports community really so fragile that we hide the abuse of leaders in that community while destroying the children within the community? I think not, for not only the children - but for the wholeness of the church/community or other organization - these grievous abusive actions must be exposed - prosecuted - and the victims given support and the tools to heal. Our greatest danger often is not an enemy outside - but rather the enemy within.

by chaplain on Tue Mar 08, 2016 at 01:54:13 PM EST

I've found the hierarchy's failure to address this issue both infuriating and disgraceful. The bishops should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, but there seem to be concerted efforts to prevent this from happening. If a county has a majority Catholic population, this should be an ideal incentive to make sure justice is done for the abused. Sadly, it often doesn't work out that way.

by khughes1963 on Thu Mar 10, 2016 at 10:03:10 PM EST

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by tadobre on Mon Mar 25, 2019 at 05:55:48 AM EST

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