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Paul Muschick: Grand jury members should be lauded for enduring tough testimony about priest sex abuse

Morning Call - 8/15/2018

Aug. 15--The atrocious allegations revealed Tuesday in the state grand jury report of priest sexual abuse against children were hard to hear.

Imagine what it was like for the 23 members of the grand jury.

The accounts published in the report and recounted by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro during a news conference -- such as a boy who was forced to stand on a bed, strip naked and pose as Christ on the cross in a rectory in the Diocese of Pittsburgh -- were awful enough.

I'm sure the grand jury heard the accounts in much greater detail, and in much more graphic detail. And they heard stories like that repeatedly, over two years. It could not have been easy on them.

"We owe them a profound debt of gratitude for public service," Shapiro said of the grand jurors.

He lauded them, saying they "listened to accounts of horrific sexual abuse of victims by priests and they reached a unanimous conclusion."

The jurors came from all over the state, as this was a statewide investigating grand jury. They met a few days a month in Pittsburgh. Some of them traveled great distances to get there, Shapiro said.

I'm sure they had a lot going through their heads during their trips home. It's likely they may be haunted by what they heard for a long time.

If you're wondering whether the jurors were compensated for their efforts, they were. But not much. State law calls for members of statewide investigating grand juries to be paid $40 a day, plus mileage. They are given $10 for lunch. Those staying overnight because of their distance from home also receive $6 for breakfast and $25 for dinner.

In addition to hearing from witnesses, the grand jury reviewed a half-million internal church records, what Shapiro said church leaders referred to as the "secret archives."

The jurors' work wasn't done after hearing the testimony and reviewing the records. They had to sort through the evidence to determine what they found to be credible. That couldn't have been easy, either.

The grand jury was diligent. It elected not to include in its report every priest who was the subject of sexual abuse allegations. Shapiro said the jurors opted not to identify those where information was "too scanty." While more than 400 clergy were identified in the church files, only 301 were included in the grand jury report, he said.

The jurors should be lauded for that discretion, too.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interviewed a woman, Mary McHale of Reading, who testified about being abused.

"I felt very heard," McHale said. "I felt like the grand jury was very attentive, and they seemed welcoming. You just got the sense that they were on my side, they believed me."

The Post-Gazette also interviewed Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico, the only bishop of the six dioceses under investigation who was willing to testify in person before the grand jury.

"When you sit there for two years listening to victims and also to abusers ... that is very difficult on the jurors," Persico said. "Then I go into there as a representative, as a bishop. They're upset with you. I thought it was important first to apologize to them for what they had to experience."

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(c)2018 The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)

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