Clergy Sex Abuse Justice
HARRISBURG — When Republican state Rep. Jim Gregory learned Monday from Gov. Tom Wolf that an administrative error will delay a decision on whether survivors can sue for decades-old sexual abuse, he broke down and sobbed.
“That’s where I had to leave it with him — to hope he understood the gravity of what this means to victims, to know that we could be so close to achieving something for them that has been decades in wait,” Gregory, a Blair County Republican and survivor of child sexual abuse, said of his conversation with Wolf. “To now have to say, again, ‘You’re going to have to wait.’ I would believe that my emotions mirrored the emotions of other victims.”
The Department of State recently discovered that it had failed last year to advertise, as required under state law, a proposed change to Pennsylvania’s constitution that would create a two-year window so victims of decades-old abuse can sue perpetrators and the institutions that covered up the crimes.