ERIE — Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico has presided over a sweeping internal investigation of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Diocese of Erie. And in a move unprecedented nationwide, he has released more than 60 names of clergy and laypeople accused of abuse or other misconduct in the 13-county diocese.
But even Persico said he was unaware of some information on the Erie diocese included in the grand jury report that could be released to the public as early as Wednesday — a report that will be more comprehensive after retired Erie Catholic Bishop Donald W. Trautman dropped his objections to it on Friday.
Asked in a recent interview whether there were items in the report that he did not know about or that surprised him, Persico said, “Yes, there were.”
The extent of the grand jury’s findings on the Erie diocese — as well as on other five Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses that were under investigation — will finally become clear to the public on Wednesday or by Aug. 14, the two deadlines the state Supreme Court set for the release of the nearly 900-page grand jury report.
Persico and the bishops of the other dioceses received copies of the report in advance, and they are still bound by grand jury secrecy rules until the release of the report. It examines allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors and how the dioceses handled the cases.
But speaking in general, Persico said the report — which includes the names of more than 300 “predator priests” statewide, according to the limited information the Supreme Court has disclosed — is replete with specific details about what the grand jury found.
Those who read the report, said Persico, the only bishop to testify before the grand jury, “will see that the report is very sobering, that the report contains a lot of explicit details — some of it they may actually find shocking in the details.”
“It’s not an easy read,” Persico said.
Pushing for report’s release
Persico, the bishop of the Erie diocese since October 2012, was the first of the six bishops in the affected dioceses to state that he would not try to block the release of the grand jury report. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, which conducted the grand jury probe, had intended to release the report in late June. But more than a dozen priests and others named in the report have objected to its release in its current form and petitioned for redactions, leading the Supreme Court to issue a stay.
In a ruling a week ago, the Supreme Court ordered the report to be released by Wednesday or Aug. 14, depending on how much time a court-appointed master needs to review the petitioners’ requests for redactions. Whenever the report is released, it will not be complete. Under the Supreme Court order, portions will be blacked out until the justices hear arguments from the petitioners on what information they want to be excluded. Those arguments are to be scheduled in September.
The state’s grand jury law requires the prosecution to notify people who are named critically in a grand jury report to give them a chance to file a written response before the report’s release. The petitioners in the current case are arguing that the Pennsylvania constitution affords them more due-process rights, such as a court hearing, to object to a grand jury’s findings before the release of its report.
Persico said the Catholic Diocese of Erie will not fund any effort to force a redaction of the report or to block the report.
“The position of the diocese is that we want the grand jury report to be released,” Persico said. “If there are any people who are mentioned in the grand jury who want to be a part of the stay, the diocese will not pay for that.”
Persico said his name appears in the grand jury report, but that he saw no need to file a written response. Before the pope named him the bishop of the Erie diocese, Persico was vicar general and acting chancellor for the Diocese of Greensburg, which is also part of the grand jury investigation.
“I am not only in the report for Erie,” Persico said. “I am also in the report for Greensburg.”
The other dioceses in the pending report are based in Allentown, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton. Previous grand jury reports investigated allegations of child sexual abuse in Pennsylvania’s two other Roman Catholic dioceses, in Altoona-Johnstown and Philadelphia.
Trautman’s drops challenges
Trautman, Persico’s predecessor as bishop, served from 1990 until he retired upon Persico’s appointment in 2012. Trautman, who still lives in Erie, had been pursuing objections to the report before he dropped them on Friday in an agreement with the attorney general’s office.
Trautman said he never sought to block the report’s release, but wanted it to more accurately portray how addressed abuse allegations during his tenure, when he removed 22 priests. The attorney general’s office, while not conceding the report is improper, agreed to clarify, for example, that general references in the report to a cover-up in the dioceses “are not specifically directed at Bishop Trautman,” according to the filing in which Trautman withdrew his challenges.
“I wanted it to be accurate, honest, fair and in context,” Trautman on Friday said of why he filed the challenges.
Trautman’s dropping of his objections means that the redacted grand jury report will include no blacked-out segments related to him and how he handled abuse allegations.
“I was pleased to hear that Bishop Emeritus Donald Trautman withdrew his appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and has now aligned himself with the position of the Diocese of Erie,” Persico said in a statement on Friday. “His action will provide a clear voice for the victims, and allow the people of the diocese to have a greater understanding of our history.”
As bishop of Erie, Persico has updated the child-protection policies formulated during Trautman’s tenure, when the clergy sexual abuse scandal exploded nationwide due to the disclosures in Boston in 2002. Persico’s most visible push for transparency has been his release of the names of the accused, including laypeople, a first for a diocese in the United States.
“We have to try to bring about healing,” Persico, in an interview, said of releasing the names. “These victims have suffered long enough. Unless you are transparent, how can people put their trust in church leadership?
“That is one aspect of the transparency. But it is also full disclosure. People have to know about these abusers and what they have done and the actions the diocese is taking to protect children.”
Though Trautman removed 22 priests from ministry, he never named them. He said he chose not to do so because some of them had never been convicted in criminal court or canonical court. He also said he was concerned about how naming the defrocked priests would affect the reputations of their families.
Trautman said he always worked to help victims, and on Friday he expressed his “disgust” with clergy sexual abuse. He said he had former FBI agents review the diocese’s records to make sure “child predators were put out of ministry.” He said he reported all allegations to the authorities, and he had then Erie County District Attorney Brad Foulk review the diocese’s records in 2002.
Foulk, who died in 2009, announced after the review in 2002 that the statute of limitations had expired on prosecuting any of the cases. He said none of the accused priests were in positions where they would “present a danger to the children of the community.”
Trautman on Friday was asked how he thought Persico had handled the abuse allegations, including naming accused priests and laypeople. Persico hired an outside law firm to review all abuse cases to help determine whose names the diocese should release.
“He is the bishop of the diocese,” Trautman said. “He has stated his views.”
Testifying before grand jury
In addition to releasing the names, Persico has been unique in another respect — as the only bishop in the six dioceses who testified in person before the grand jury during its two-year investigation. Persico initially submitted the grand jury a written statement, as did the other five bishops, all separately.
Persico said he then accepted Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s invitation to testify before the panel of 23 grand jurors. The diocese said Shapiro made the invitation after Persico released the names of accused priests and laypeople on April 6.
Persico said he testified in May, as the grand jury neared the completion of its term. He said he explained the Diocese of Erie’s child-protection policies and answered questions for more than an hour from the grand jurors and prosecutors with the attorney general’s office. Only the prosecution calls witnesses and presents evidence before a grand jury.
Persico said that, before he took the stand, a prosecutor cautioned him that the grand jury was “hostile.” Persico said he found that to be the case, for understandable reasons.
“It was probably one of the most difficult experiences,” Persico said of his time testifying. “Everyone deals with angry people, but when you have a roomful, it is very unsettling.”
“You could just see the hostility, the anger in their faces and the disgust,” Persico said. “Who could blame them? They have been sitting there for two years, listening to all this.”