Attorney: Laws should allow clergy abuse victims to sue

Serbin: Payments less than what could have been awarded in court

An attorney who has represented area victims of clergy sexual abuse said the payments from an Altoona-Johnstown compensation fund are less than could have been awarded if lawsuits could have been filed.

Attorney Richard Serbin said the state should change laws to allow victims to sue for past abuses.

Seven Pennsylvania Roman Catholic Dioceses recently volunteered to start a victim compensation fund in the wake of a grand jury report that documented decades of child sexual abuse by priests, but the Altoona-Johnstown diocese is not one of them.

The local diocese had established a separate fund nearly two decades ago for victims in its purview comprising Blair, Cambria, Bedford, Centre, Fulton, Huntingdon and Somerset counties where 50 priests and religious leaders over 40 years allegedly abused hundreds of children. That abuse was documented by a separate grand jury investigation of Altoona-Johnstown in 2016.

Since 1999, the diocese maintains it has offered more than $2.8 million for victim counseling, reaching more than 300 individuals.

However, Serbin said compensation was limited to counseling and no victims were given financial settlements that resemble what would result from a civil suit. And because it was not a legal proceeding, attorneys were not part of it.

"The diocese's recent statement of their compensation fund for two decades is misleading and no doubt another effort to make them look compassionate," Serbin said.

On Nov. 9, the diocese said it plans to issue a more complete financial and statistical summary on clergy abuse in the near future.

Serbin stated that to truly provide justice for victims, churches should cooperate with state lawmakers to temporarily repeal the statute of limitations on child sex abuse for now-adult victims who have aged out of their ability to sue their abusers and the institutions that in many cases allegedly covered up the abuse.

Just before the Legislature adjourned in October, state lawmakers came close to passing a retroactive two-year window that would allow victims who have timed out of the statute of limitations to sue.

The House passed the measure, but it was not brought up for a vote in the Senate.

"For decades, dioceses throughout Pennsylvania ignored the plight of child sex abuse survivors. Now, because of the threat of a change in the statute of limitations law in Pennsylvania providing survivors a window of justice, the Catholic church suddenly wants to demonstrate compassion toward abuse survivors by creating 'Compensation Funds,'" Serbin wrote in a statement.

"If indeed the church has altered its position from complicity in the protection of child predators to transparency and justice for survivors, it will call off its paid lobbyists in Harrisburg and instead support the recommendations of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury affording survivors the opportunity to seek justice. The creation of a 'compensation fund' should not prevent those who want to have their day in court an opportunity to expose transgressions against children."

Mirror Staff Writer Russ O'Reilly is at 946-7435.