Harrisburg Diocese priests groomed, fondled and raped victims, and several Diocesan administrators, including bishops, often dissuaded those who came forward from reporting the abuse to police, according to the statewide grand jury report.
Evidence also shows that settlements designed to silence victims were common.
Two Harrisburg priests and a church leader who the grand jury said was instrumental in the Harrisburg Diocese’s handling of sexual abuse allegations are among those who fought the report’s release. Their names are redacted. In all, 45 Harrisburg area priests are identified as abusers.
The grand jury reported that the Rev. Augustine “Gus” Giella preyed on an entire Enhaut area family, abusing five sisters who belonged to St. John the Evangelist Church.
Rev. Giella’s abuse of one of those sisters was especially horrific. The fondling began when she was 18 months old and continued until she was 12. The grand jury concluded that Giella’s abuse could have been stopped much earlier if church leaders had acted on an early complaint.
Father Giella was eventually arrested and charged in 1992 with child abuse and child pornography, but died before he ever went to trial.
The Rev. Arthur Long, a Jesuit priest, preyed on teenage girls, admitted to having sex with one and tried to marry another, but that didn’t stop church leaders from shuffling his assignments several times in the 1970s and 80s, the report said.
Monsignour Hugh Overbaugh oversaw Father Long’s work, and in one letter regarding sexual abuse allegations against Father Long, he wrote, “While this documentation contains numerous complaints, we seldom if ever receive word of all the good which Father Long accomplished.”
Another priest, the Rev. Joseph Pease, was accused in 1995 of sexually abusing a boy between 1971 and 1973 when the boy was 13 to 15 years old. The accuser said he came forward only when he realized, 20 years after being assaulted, that his abuser was still in ministry and that the victim’s nephew was an altar server in his abuser’s church. That report came in 1995 and should have resulted in Pease’s referral to law enforcement. Instead, church leaders sent Father Pease for a psychological evaluation.
Almost 10 years later, church leaders who knew about the allegations against Father Pease allowed him to retire without defrocking him. Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer affirmed his support for the abusive priest in a 2014 letter to the Vatican.
“I am not seeking the initiation of a trial, nor dismissal from the clerical state.” he wrote. Instead, he asked that Father Pease “be permitted to live out his remaining years in prayer and penance, without adding further anxiety or suffering to his situation, and without risking public knowledge of his crimes.”
In a statement Bishop Gainer released Tuesday in response to the grand jury’s report, he expressed sorrow over the grand jury’s findings and apologized to survivors.
“I acknowledge the sinfulness of those who have harmed these survivors, as well as the action and inaction of those in Church leadership who failed to respond appropriately,” he wrote.
First Published: August 15, 2018, 11:02 a.m.
