Tuesday, August 14, 2018

In Pennsylvania Church, "The Weaponization of Faith"

After a two-year process, an 884-page Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing seven decades of sexual abuse and its cover-up in the dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton was released at 2pm Eastern, the end of a court-imposed deadline.

The most sprawling probe of its kind for the American church – equaled only by similar state inquiries in Ireland and Australia – the grand jury identified some 300 accused clerics across the six dioceses and 1,000 victim-survivors found through testimonies and seven decades' worth of subpoenaed personnel files and other records.

The entire report can be found here. With the impacted dioceses set to react at separate news conferences later today, more to follow; as ever, real-time developments are being posted in these pages' running side-feed.

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