Could the priest sexual-abuse scandal get any worse? For Long Islanders who opened their morning paper on February 10, the answer was yes. It described a Suffolk County, New York, grand jury report detailing the history of how the Diocese of Rockville Centre had deliberately and systematically mishandled dozens of cases. The grand jury report, online at www.co.suffolk.ny.us/da/home.htm, is a compilation of what New York tabloids have dubbed "the sins of the fathers." In this case, the tabs didn’t have to sensationalize. Detailed descriptions of crimes involving sexual assault, even when couched in legalese, are horrific. The report doesn’t mention names. Accused priests are referred to as "Priest A" and so forth, almost exhausting the alphabet. The grand jury was unable to call for indictments because the statute of limitations had run out. But it did ask for changes in the law to make future sexual abusers criminally accountable. The reaction from the diocese was to emphasize its cooperation with the report-diocesan officials’ testimony and documents comprised much of its content-and to claim that the cover-up charged in its pages never existed. There is no way to render these offenses-inflicted mostly on teenage boys but, in at least one case, girls-understandable. The grand jury’s chronicle would make anyone sick. Yet, for a select group of Long Islanders, it couldn’t have been entirely surprising. I am a member of that group. I worked on the editorial staff of the Long Island Catholic, the diocesan weekly, from 1991 to 1998. Many who worked for the diocese had heard faint rumblings of something amiss, but it was hard to know what to believe. Most of us-priests and lay employees alike-were concerned about doing our work. We presumed the proper authorities were handling any such matters in a just way. According to the grand jury, we couldn’t have been more wrong. No victim of sexual abuse ever confided in me, and I heard no direct complaints about abuse. But a monsignor, left unnamed in the report, was quite familiar to anyone who ever asked questions about sexual abuse in the church on Long Island. This monsignor-who has now been publicly accused of sexual abuse but formerly served as an official diocesan representative on such cases-would regularly brag that the diocese had been able to escape nearly all legal liability. Those boasts are detailed in the grand jury report. Certain aspects of the approach taken by the diocese to lawsuits might once have appeared reasonable, but in the cold light of the report, things seem very different. At the time, I didn’t believe the monsignor’s boasts. Was there something in the water on Long Island that had spared the church from these scandals? The monsignor was always reticent with details, claiming the need for confidentiality. But the grand jury report indicates something else: through the monsignor’s problematic dual role as lawyer for the church and pastoral confidante to those claiming abuse, the diocese won the confidence of victims and headed off legal action. My doubts never entered into my reporting. Diocesan newspapers do not broadcast weaknesses in diocesan procedures or policies. They cannot break ground on stories perceived to be harmful to the interests of their bishop/publishers, lest their editors not be employed for long. Most cases detailed in the report go back decades, but one, involving the transfer of a priest to the pastorate of a large parish with a school-even after details of abuse had been made known to diocesan officials-occurred only in the past few years. Part of the grand jury report reads as all-too familiar. A whistleblower in one case-a former church employee-was described by the grand jury as being the victim of an orchestrated campaign to discredit her. I was aware of the whispering campaign about her and came to the conclusion that either she was psychotic or telling the truth. After talking with her regularly, I concluded she was telling the truth. The grand jury believed her as well. Not that the grand jury report-or better still, the process-is beyond question. Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota, a Catholic, could be criticized for forming a grand jury to investigate cases that could not be prosecuted. The district attorney in neighboring Nassau County decided not to impanel a grand jury. That fact leaves Spota open to charges of grandstanding. Bishop William Murphy is sure to catch hell for this, and in this case, unfairly. (What he did or didn’t do in Boston, where he was an auxiliary bishop under Cardinal Bernard Law before being assigned to Rockville Centre, is another matter.) Since coming to Long Island two years ago, he has instituted what appear to be needed reforms, including a complete revamping of the diocesan board that handles such cases. The Suffolk County grand jury report is a case study of how the church failed the victims, betraying its own ethical standards. Yet the question remains: why did it take an outside group, with nothing but shared experience, common sense, and the power to compel testimony, to provide such a detailed, damning, and-if the church really cares about doing something about sexual abuse-ultimately helpful report? [end]