The grand jury report on the Catholic sexual abuses in Altoona-Johnstown is available for reading, and I’m sorry, it’s practically pornographic. What these people were doing to the children of their community, with the compliance of the police who turned a blind eye to their behavior, is obscene.
In 1971, Father John Boyle groped the genitals of a 15-year-old boy in the basement of St. Edward’s Church in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania on numerous occasions. Boyle also kissed the boy and performed oral sex on him. The boy was confused. He could tast the alcohol on Father Boyle’s mouth. He concluded that what was happening to him must be what the Church called the “mystery of the Church and Priesthood.”
It goes on and on like that for 145 pages. I could not bear to read much of it. But it’s clear that the diocese was knowingly shuffling pedophile priests around, doing nothing about them, and basically enabling the rape of children for decades.
They even had a pay-out schedule for offenses when they were caught at it!
That’s a lot of money. It’s telling that the church hierarchy was willing to fork over that kind of cash rather than actually punishing and stopping their bad priests — and that tells you the whole thing was rotten, root and branch.