Fiona Graybill

In the state of Pennsylvania, there is a very large Catholic community, which is at the center of this article and a part of the much bigger issue of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.  In the state, there are more than 1,000 victims of sexual abuse that have been identified within the Catholic churches of Pennsylvania. The scandal has accused the churches of covering up decades of abuse and has linked the Vatican in these scandals. The New York Times article states that there are likely more victims in the state of Pennsylvania that never spoke up or did speak up but their accusations were never recorded. The State Legislature has stood their ground in lifting a law that states childhood victims are not able to file lawsuits against the church and sue until they are thirty years of age, this prohibiting families who have children who were abused to actively press charges against the church.

The article is important because, beginning in 2002, the exposing of the sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has become widely published about and known to the people. The covering up of the scandals involving the children and the Catholic Church then the denial of the supposed cover up shows the people that this has become a normality amongst some Catholic dioceses. This also shows that some of the people who supposedly work on behalf of the Lord are willing to protect their colleagues no matter the wrongdoing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-church-sex-abuse-pennsylvania.html