Five Facts About the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report

For the next two days, I will publish some things that the Media Report has uncovered and needs to be circulated.  The first article in this series is found here

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Reality Check: Five Fast Facts You Need to Know About the Overhyped PA Grand Jury Report

The recently released Pennsylvania grand jury report about abuse there decades ago has predictably created the usual media circus of untethered allegations and hysterical claims by haters of the Church. Amidst all of this hysteria, however, all fair-minded people should consider the following indisputable facts about the report:

1. A "grand jury report" is essentially a press release written by publicity seeking prosecutors.

As any lawyer will tell you, a "grand jury report" is actually written by government attorneys with an agenda. The folks in the "jury" are merely a formality, window dressing to make the matter legal. Jurors sit in a room eating hoagies and reading the newspaper while "listening" to one-sided proceedings orchestrated by prosecutors. There is no fact-checking, no cross-examination of witnesses, and no due process.

When the time comes, a jury member simply slaps his signature on the finished product written by prosecutors to make everything official. Press conferences by politically ambitious prosecutors ensue, and the intended media hysteria follows.

Properly used, a grand jury is merely supposed examine evidence to determine whether there is probable cause that a crime took place and should be prosecuted. This was clearly not the intention of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. In an 800+-page screed, Shapiro's report does not recommend a single criminal charge, because almost all of the accusations are many decades old.

In truth, the whole grand jury report idea was cooked up by Shapiro's predecessor, the disgraced Kathleen Kane, now criminally convicted of perjury, in order to gain media attention and advance her own political ambitions.

2. Most of the priests named in the report are dead and unable to defend themselves.

TheMediaReport.com identified approximately 233 individuals in the report who were named and whose living status was noted. Of the 233 priests whose living status was known, 124, or over 53%, were deceased, and thus no longer around to defend themselves. (The status of about 20 men in the report were listed as "unknown"; 20 entries were blacked out (redacted) completely; and there were about 13 others who were not even listed with a name (e.g., "Pittsburgh priests #2-10," "Harrisburg priest #1," etc.).)

One such dead priest who would probably want to respond to the charges against him in the report if he were alive is Fr. Gregory Flohr, who died in 2007. Flohr died completely unblemished, without a single charge against him in over four decades in ministry. After he died, an anonymous male accuser came forward with a bizarre claim that no reasonable person would believe. Yet Fr. Flohr was included anyway in the bogus report even though he is obviously unable to defend himself.

3. There are numerous priests named in the report who are falsely accused.

For starters, in discussing the case of Msgr. Thomas Benestad, the grand jury report chastised the Church because it "elected to rely on Benestad's word rather than the word of the victims." What the report failed to mention, however, is that Benestad's case was thoroughly examined by a former FBI agent who determined it to be bogus. Sources also tells us that Benestad's male accuser was a criminal with incarcerations in multiple states and has been diagnosed with mental illness. Yet Benestad's name has been plastered across the media landscape as if he had been determined guilty.

And Benestad's case is just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, we may never know exactly the dozens of priests who were wrongly maligned in Shapiro's press release.

4. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro outright lied in the report and deceived the public.

Shapiro's claims that the Church "did nothing" when handling abuse cases and that it showed "complete disdain" for victims are nothing but complete fabrications.

Take the case in the report of Rev. Joseph Mueller: In 1986, a man went to the Diocese of Pittsburgh to claim that Mueller abused him years earlier as a teenager. Then-Bishop Donald Wuerl immediately removed him from ministry and shipped him off to St. Luke's treatment facility. St. Luke's advised Wuerl that Mueller "not work with children or adolescents." So what did Wuerl do? He stripped Mueller of his faculties, and the dude never worked as a priest again.

In fact, if one takes the time to actually read the report, one will see that the first action by a diocese, even many decades ago, was almost always to immediately remove the accused priest from his assignment. In a bunch of cases, priestly faculties were stripped. Therapy was often provided to victims.

As for Shapiro's claim that the Church showed "complete disdain" for victims, Cardinal Wuerl has asserted, "I met with every victim. Anyone that would come forward, I met with them and I'd have to say more than once shared a tear with them as they or their parents told the story."

5. The Catholic Church's practice of retaining its personnel files for centuries continues to gratuitously expose itself to scrutiny by secular authorities.

Do you ever wonder why you never see a "grand jury report" about abuse by public school teachers from the 1960s, 70s, or 80s like we do from the Catholic Church?

The reason is simple: Under federal law, organizations only need to retain personnel documents for one year after an employee departs the organization. Then off to the shredder they go.

Meanwhile, the Church preserves documents dating back to the first century, and at the same time it is accused of secreting evidence and obstructing justice.