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One of the Altoona-Johnstown, Pa., bishops singled out by a grand jury report for his “abysmal” record on sexually abusive priests responded in turn hours after its release, defending his handling of allegations as adhering to a strict review process and following advice of psychiatric experts.
In a 10-page statement filed with the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas in Pittsburgh, Bishop Joseph Adamec argued the grand jury wasn’t given “a full and balanced set of facts” as it related to his tenure as head of the diocese (1987-2011), and as a result, the criticism raised against him in the stinging report is “unfounded.”
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane presented the 147-page grand jury report, developed from an investigation of nearly two years and built from thousands of pages of transcribed witness testimony and more than 115,000 documents seized from the diocese’s secret archives as part of a search warrant in August 2015.
The report presented an image of the diocese as “rampant with child molestation for decades” — all told, hundreds of children abused by at least 50 priests and religious leaders — while bishops, including Adamec and his predecessor Bishop James Hogan, enabled and concealed the problem, at times with lax law enforcement aware of allegations.
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