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Grand jury report outlines widespread child sex abuse in Pa. dioceses

By Scott Beveridge staff Writer sbeveridge@observer-Reporter.Com 10 min read
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Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter

Bishop David A. Zubik of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh discusses parish reductions recently in East Carnegie.

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Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter

Bishop David Zubik speaks to reporters during an Aug. 14 news conference at the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Four priests in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh once groomed boys for sex, including one boy who was violently assaulted and made to pose nude on a bed as Christ.

Photographs were taken of that scene and later shared on church grounds. That child abuse was included in a statewide grand jury report made public Aug. 14 by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

The priests’ “favorite boys” in that case were given gold crosses as gifts that marked them as having already been groomed for sex, Shapiro said at a news conference in Harrisburg.

In all, 99 priests in the Pittsburgh diocese were identified as child predators in the more than 800-page report that culminated nearly two years of testimony. The report listed 301 predator priests in six dioceses in Pennsylvania and more that 1,000 child victims over the past seven decades, although the grand jury believes the real numbers are higher.

Shapiro alluded to a “systematic cover-up in Pennsylvania” by church officials.

Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik said the diocese had no intention of covering up the abuse, although he is mentioned in the report.

“The report certainly does not indicate that I did anything that was covering up, and I can say personally that did not happen,” Zubik said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon at the diocese in Pittsburgh. “The intention was not cover up, and that’s why I can stand firm in myself to say that I’ve not been part of a cover up.”

Zubik, who became a priest 43 years ago, said he was disgusted by the things he read in the report.

“I feel betrayed,” he said. “The goal of my life as a priest and when I said ‘yes’ to becoming a priest, is that I was going to reflect the person of Jesus Christ. The fact that other people who said ‘yes’ did the things that are recounted in this report is a tragedy.”

In 1992, the then-Rev. David Zubik had a telephone conversation with a young man who accused the Rev. James R. Adams of sexually assaulting him in the 1970s when he was between 8 and 10 years old and attending St. Francis of Assisi in Finleyville, the report indicates. The boy accused Adams of touching his genitals while he was fully clothed as Adams drove groups of boys to outings. Zubik is now the bishop for the Pittsburgh diocese.

Adams was withdrawn from the church and sent to a Catholic community in St. Louis for evaluation and treatment. He left before completing the treatment, and he was eventually permanently removed from the priesthood.

“Some were manipulated with alcohol or pornography. Some were made to masturbate their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally,” the report states.

“But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all,” the report states.

The report found a pattern among the dioceses that was “like a playbook for concealing the truth.” The files were kept in a locked “secret archive,” and some of them were in cabinets just feet away from bishops’ desks. Only the bishops had the keys to the cabinets.

Shapiro said some of the files listed the activities as “horseplay, wrestling and inappropriate touching,” euphemisms for sexual assault. The report was also critical of sending priests for “evaluations” at church-run centers.

“It was none of these things,” Shapiro said. “It was child sexual abuse, rape committed by grown men.

“The men of God not only did nothing, but they hid it for decades.”

Zubik said the only two things in the secret archives kept in the Diocese of Pittsburgh are “the bishop’s last will and testament and the succession that would happen if the bishop dropped dead.”

Shapiro also said some priests were promoted after they became aware of the abuse allegations.

He noted former Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl is now a cardinal in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and Zubik is a bishop.

In a statement after the report’s release, Wuerl said the abuse “is a terrible tragedy, and the church can never express enough (of) our deep sorrow and contrition for the abuse, and for the failure to respond promptly and completely.”

He said he believes the report confirms that “I acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse.”

Shapiro said “the circle of secrecy” in the church was not a phrase created by the FBI or grand jury.

“We got it from Bishop Wuerl of Pittsburgh. … in one of the documents we reviewed; these were his own words for the church’s child sex abuse cover-up.”

The church responded to that allegation, stating the phrase was not in Wuerl’s handwriting and the investigation refused to “acknowledge the mistake.”

The church’s response to the report made it clear the context of the phrase meant the diocese would not tolerate secrecy and demanded transparency from “priests in question.”

During his news conference, Zubik defended Wuerl, saying he was “passionate” about ending child sex abuse and the diocese worked for 30 years to prevent abuse.

“I believe, because he was passionate about these kinds of things, he would not have done anything deliberately to cover up or make things seem what they were not,” Zubik said.

Zubik said at least 90 percent of all reported child sexual abuse by clergy in the Diocese of Pittsburgh occurred prior to 1990.

“The Diocese of Pittsburgh today is not the church that is described in the grand jury report. It has not been for a long time. Over the course of the last 30 years, we have made significant changes to how we prevent abuse and report allegations,” Zubik said.

He also said, “There is no priest or deacon in public ministry today in the Diocese of Pittsburgh with a substantiated allegation of child sexual abuse against him.”

Zubik said the diocese plans to bring in an expert on prevention of child sex abuse to review its practices and make recommendations. He said the diocese also hired someone to monitor clergy who have been removed due to sexual allegations.

Zubik promised to meet with and apologize to any victims.

“To those of you who have in any way been the victim of any abuse, sexual or otherwise, whether as a child or as an adult, or as a parent, or as a sibling, or as a friend who shared the pain of that someone you love – I ask you, the church asks you for forgiveness,” Zubik said.

Barbara S. Miller, Linda Ritzer and Katie Anderson contributed to this report.

More than 300 men across Pennsylvania were named in state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s grand jury report released Aug. 14 that investigators termed as “predator priests,” including 99 in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Some of those priests served in the South Hills.

The Rev. Leo Burchianti is accused of having “inappropriate contact” with at least eight boys, which included oral and anal sex, between 1967 and 1993. Some of this molestation occurred while he was a priest at Our Lady of Grace in Scott from 1968 to 1973.

The Rev. Charles Chatt was accused of abusing a 14-year-old boy in the early 1970s while he was at St. Anne in Castle Shannon, a 15-year-old boy at St. Albert the Great in Baldwin in the late 1970s and two adult brothers at Our Lady of Loreto in Brookline before resigning his position in 1992.

The Rev. Anthony Cipolla was first accused of abusing young brothers, ages 12 and 9, in 1978 while at St. Francis Xavier in Pittsburgh in 1978. This was immediately after he left St. Agatha in Bridgeville after spending three years there. He also spent two years at St. Bernard in Mt. Lebanon. The mother of the two boys went to Pittsburgh police, but later asked that charges not be pursued after being “harassed and threatened by the church” to allow church officials handle it. A decade later, newly-anointed Bishop Donald Wuerl demanded Cipolla seek counseling or he would be removed as a priest, going so far as traveling to the Vatican in April 1993 for the Supreme Tribunal’s approval. But Cipolla continued acting as a priest and “saying masses” for another 22 years despite Wuerl’s disapproval. He eventually asked Bishop David Zubik for his retirement pension in 2015, which was denied.

The Rev. Dominic McGee was accused in an internal Diocese of Pittsburgh memo in 2004 of molesting a male student while at Canevin High School in the mid-1970s. The report states he masturbated him, and that McGee also groped his younger brother’s genitals while sleeping on a couch.

The Washington County district attorney’s office received an anonymous tip in 2016 that the Rev. Francis Pucci had engaged in inappropriate sexual touching of a boy at St. Alphonsus in McDonald in 1983. Similar allegations were made against Pucci while he served as a priest at St. Joseph in Coraopolis in the early 80s and another man who claimed the priest touched him at an unnamed church in 1988.

The Rev. David Scharf is accused of massaging the feet of young boys and later admitted to masturbating to photos of their feet. He was a priest at Our Lady of Grace in Scott Township from 1987 to 1992.

A reference made in a St. Bernadine Clinic report that “sexual problems with adolescents” had occurred in 1972 while the Rev. Francis Siler served at St. Bernard in Mt. Lebanon, causing Bishop Leonard to change Siler’s assignment, sending him to St. Titus in Aliquippa. A report in 2011 accused Siler of groping a boy while at the Beaver County church between 1972 and 1974.

Parish staff at St. Dominic in Donora found photos of the Rev. Paul Spisak pulling down the pants of two teen boys while vacationing with them in the 1980s. He also was charged in 2006 with placing a video camera in a male bathroom stall at South Hills Village Mall in Upper St Clair. The invasion of privacy charge was later dropped. Spisak spent two years at St. Benedict the Abbot in McMurray in the late 1970s and eight months at St. Mary in Cecil in 1998.

The Rev. George Wilt was accused of making unwanted advances to a woman in 2000 while he was at St. Bernard in Mt. Lebanon. Two other women told diocesan officials they saw Wilt inappropriately touch women during various celebrations and kiss eighth-grade girls. A woman also claimed Wilt abused her while she was a seventh- or eighth-grader at Sacred Heart in Pittsburgh in the early 1960s.

The Rev. Robert Wolk befriended a 12-year-old boy while at St. Thomas More in Bethel Park in 1987. Overnight stays in Wolk’s rectory apartment included x-rated movies, belly rubs and oral sex. The boy’s younger brother reported similar abuse. Wolk pleaded guilty to charges in Allegheny and Washington counties in 1990.

The full report can be viewed at http://media-downloads.pacourts.us/InterimRedactedReportandResponses.pdf?cb=32148

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